Bulgarian Trafficking

Link to Article: Bulgarian officials say legalizing prostitution could spur human trafficking


In the last decade, Bulgaria has come into the spot light, concerning its increasingly drastic numbers of human trafficking. It has been concluded that 10,000 Bulgarian women are trafficked each year to neighboring countries where prostitution is legal. However, in the last few years, the Bulgarian government has sought legislation that would legalize prostitution in Bulgaria for the sake of gaining revenue through taxation and preventing prostitution for women under the age of 18. I find this reasoning, in support of legalization, to be completely deceptive and narrow-minded. The Bulgarian legislators in support of this bill would rather look past the effects, which the legalization of prostitution would have on human trafficking, in order to gain a sum of cash to use for public satisfaction with the government. Prostitution would not only allow human trafficking to occur in Bulgaria, but would most definitely support human trafficking in larger quantities. Prostitution would create a market for young women around Europe. Feeding this market by allowing prostitution would only result in trafficking on far larger scales. In a way, you could relate this issue to marijuana legalization in the United States. Many people believe that, by allowing the legalization of marijuana in the States, a profit could be made through regulated markets. On the other side of the argument, the legalization of marijuana could possibly lead to increasing misuses of marijuana around the US. But the issue at hand in Bulgaria is not marijuana. Rather the problem deals with the lives of innocent women and young girls. Prostitution in the short term would bring in some cash, but in the long run, thousands of lives could be changed and ruined through sex trafficking with the legalization of prostitution.