Countries such as Sweden which criminalise buyers simply push demand abroad and drive the sex industry underground, increasing the dangers faced by sex workers, she says.
Justice minister David Ford argued a change in the law would drive the sex industry underground and put its workers at greater risk.
By easing competition at one stage of education, it only intensified it at the next.In 1980 the government outlawed private out-of-school tutoring, which drove the industry underground.
Surprisingly, perhaps, the proposal also has been panned by groups such as Aids Project Los Angeles, which says that while it supports safer sex, the measure will push the industry underground, or to places with fewer safeguards.
A top fertility expert branded the government's move discriminatory, while a leading women's activist warned it could push the industry underground and out of reach of regulators.
One of the main arguments of those who oppose any attempt to criminalise prostitution is that it simply drives the industry underground, putting the sex workers in a more vulnerable position.
Working girls in Paris have already accused her of trying to drive a relatively well regulated industry underground, with demonstrators at a protest march in the Pigalle red light district carrying banners that read: "Criminalised clients means murdered prostitutes".
"This will increase violence, make sex workers less likely to report crimes to the police, increase stigma and force the sex industry underground," said Lee. "I find it incredible that people push this moralising crusade in the face of all the evidence which says the decriminalisation of the sex industry is the only way to improve the welfare of sex workers".
Weitz's predicament sheds light on what activists have increasingly identified as a major injustice in the burgeoning pot industry: underground growers and drug dealers have been systematically shut out, and victims of the war on drugs have been unable to participate in the booming marijuana economy.
MacKinnon and Dworkin thought that criminalizing the production, publication or consumption of pornography would be counterproductive, serving to drive the industry underground, thereby only further obscuring the harm it causes to women.
