413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

Interviewer: And did you start using crack when you were 23 or 24
Respondent: Yeah.
Interviewer: Any particular reason Trying to stay awake
Respondent: Well, there was, there was sometimes that the men that I was seeing
couldn’t see me till late at night … I had two that worked night shift. I had to be awake at
like four in the morning. (M3)
In sum, similar to other scholars’ findings, we found that sex workers’ paths to crack use varied, although
most were introduced to the drug by their regular contacts, ranging from friends to acquaintances to
clients. Although many had significant drug addictions throughout their lives, and even played a role in
the drug trade itself, arguably no drug played more of a central role in the sex market than crack. The
following section explores the effects that this drug had on sex workers’ lives and on the street-based sex
market.
The Impact of Crack Use on the Street-Based Sex Market in the 1990s and 2000s
Widespread crack use in the mid-1980s and 1990s marked a turning point in the street-based sex market.
In an exchange that exemplifies the experiences of many, a 48-year-old sex worker from Denver, who
started trading sex as a teenager, described the impact of crack use on the work:
Interviewer: How much were you bringing in [in the 1980s]
Respondent: I was making pretty good money. I charged, for [oral sex] it was $60, back
in the 1980s. For sex, it was $60–100 … I was bringing in about $2,500 a day … It was
still cool until the drugs came … the drugs hit at age 33 [in the late 1990s].
Interviewer: And so after you started doing drugs, you were still trading sex How was
business then
Respondent: … Late 1980s, 1990s, it was still good. It didn’t really change until about
1995 to 2001.
Interviewer: And that’s when the market changed
Respondent: Because the girls out there were getting tricks, turning them out, and
getting high. You know they want to say, “Hey, what are you doing” And you say,
“Getting high, want to try” Then they would get high and the tricks would be done [they
had no money left].
Interviewer: They would spend all their money
Respondent: Yup, they’d spend their money and be down … And they just wanted to get
high. Then I was making about $500 [a day]. (J5)
Research conducted in the mid-1990s and early 2000s on the impact of the crack epidemic on the
underground commercial sex market confirms these trends. As researchers found, street-based sex work
became less lucrative, more dangerous, more competitive, and increasingly pervaded by more and
younger sex workers and johns in the years after crack use increased (Dalla 2000; Fullilove et al. 1992;
Graham and Wish 1994; Inciardi et al. 1993; Potterat et al. 1998; Sterk et al. 2000). By drawing on
interviews with individuals who traded sex before, during, and after this time period, this section expands
upon previous research to document the lasting effects of crack use on the lives of streetwalking sex
workers and the commercial sex market more broadly.
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