- Human trafficking hotline stickers in Oregon bars could look like this one from the Polaris project
Clackamas and Portland state representatives Brent Barton and Jefferson Smith are spearheading a bill in the Oregon legislature this month that aims to get all Oregon bars and liquor stores to post a small sticker raising awareness about human trafficking.
If the bill (HB 3623) passes, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission would send every one of the state’s roughly 11,000 businesses that hold liquor licenses a small sticker advertising a national human trafficking hotline and urging both victims and people who suspect they know victims to call in and report the situation. Posting the sticker would be optional.
Smith says that getting the stickers into bars, restaurants and liquor stores is key because they will be more visible there to people at risk for coercion into the sex industry. “If we went to put the stickers in a post office or a police department, a person who’s at risk is less likely to go there than to go to a local liquor store,” says Smith. “It also sends the signal to the pimps and johns who are very likely, over the course of a week, to go to a bar or liquor store, that what they’re doing is illegal and will be stopped.”
The local bill comes on the heels of Senator Ron Wyden’s stump speech in Jantzen Beach last weekend for a federal bill to “beat the pimps” by providing more funds for human trafficking investigation and establishing a shelter for victims.
Barton and Smith’s idea is modeled on a mandatory sticker-posting program in Texas. According to Smith, after the state told all businesses with liquor licenses that they had to post a sticker for the human trafficking hotline, calls to the national hotline jumped by a third to about 650 calls a month.
I expect this bill to pass easily. Human trafficking is a big issue right now in Oregon and this is a simple way to both raise awareness and reach out to victims. Perhaps more important to politicians, there is no pricetag attached. Because the OLCC routinely sends out mailers to all licensees anyway, the estimated fiscal impact of this bill is $0.
Any evidence that a single one of those 150-odd extra phone calls stopped any human trafficking? I’m guessing the operators just had a bunch of their time wasted by morons in bars making joke calls.
“It also sends the signal to the pimps and johns who are very likely, over the course of a week, to go to a bar or liquor store, that what they’re doing is illegal and will be stopped.”
Not only do I doubt that a tiny window sticker is gonna tell a pimp anything– I doubt that they can prove liquor stores have much of anything to do with prostitution in this state. I have yet to visit a store in Oregon that isn’t clean, well-lit and closely managed. No pimps or hookers anywhere to be seen.
On the other hand, this isn’t the case for bars here, and having the phone number / url for help posted might work. But I just can’t agree with the logic that pimps and johns are also alcohol users– unless we’re still working with age-old stereotypes.
It seems like the sticker has the unintended effect of marrying a legal activity– purchasing alcohol for personal enjoyment at any of our tightly-OLCC-regulated liquor stores — with one that is illegal and considerably uglier.
Liquor stores in Texas (and most other states) are far seedier. If you want to reach out to pimps and johns, make every convenience store on 82nd display the sticker. Johns might drink. But johns might also enjoy Cheetos, coffee and frozen burritos.
What does drinking alcohol have to do with human trafficking? This makes no sense whatsoever.
Perhaps if there were a safe and legal way for people to pay for sex…because, you know, demand is never going away. Never.
Drinking alcohol doesn’t have shit to do with trafficking – they only picked those businesses because they are pervasively regulated by the state, so they are allowed to boss them around.
They couldn’t force every business on 82nd to display a useless sticker because of the whole “free speech” thing.
Yes, Colin, I know that.
They may be “allowed” to boss liquuor stores around, but that doesn’t mean they should.
Hey, gambling’s a “vice” too. Perhaps I should be reminded about child prostitution every time I sit down at a video poker machine?
Or would that hurt the state-run lotto program?
What a weird phrasing. No one who is actually being “trafficked” would ever associate that word with themselves or their situation. Who are they expecting to call this hotline?
1. About 5% of calls to the Hotline are from victims requesting help, about 30% are tips of suspicious behavior. The rest is a combination of agencies inquiring about how to provide services to victims and survivors, and people curious about human trafficking and how they can be helpful.
2. The term ‘trafficking’ is used because the UN Declaration of Human Rights defines human slavery as such. The sticker will include phrasing to the effect of ‘human trafficking and forced prostitution’ so that people can understand the broader issue at hand.
3. The stickers on liquor stores is only a start – because the state is short of money, it is a free and easy way to help spread awareness in business that have a lot of traffic. Texas passed a law requiring all business that sell liquor to post this sticker and an increased number of calls and interventions have arisen as a result.
The goal of the sticker is to be helpful for even just ONE person, but also to help raise consciousness around the issue. Most people think this is an issue affecting Southeast Asia or Russia, and don’t associate it with an Oregon problem. This is just one small solution for a big problem. Other work on the issue is happening around the State.
Wow, there is a lot of ignorance on this page. Trafficking is REAL. Many of the people who engage in it or are victimized by it frequent liquor stores, bars and other establishments where these stickers would be placed. Please educate yourselves and help fight this horrible form of slavery that DOES exist in our state.
Look at what kind of mayor Portland has…
People are shocked???