SOCIAL CLASS, DRUGS, GENDER AND THE LIMITATIONS OF THE LAW: CONTRASTING THE ELITE PROSTITUTE WITH THE STREET PROSTITUTE

• Pages: 123-139
• Date: 11 June 2003
• Published date: 11 June 2003
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(03)29005-0
• Author: Maureen Norton-Hawk

SOCIAL CLASS, DRUGS, GENDER AND

THE LIMITATIONS OF THE LAW:

CONTRASTING THE ELITE

PROSTITUTE WITH THE

STREET PROSTITUTE

Maureen Norton-Hawk

ABSTRACT

The relationship between social class, prostitution and drug use is com-

plex. The role of illegal drugs in elite prostitution is dramatically different

from that found among streetwalkers. The backgrounds of the escort service

girls,theirrelativelycomfortable and safe working conditions, and the desires

of their customers produces and maintains a pattern of drug use that is in

sharp contrast to that found on the street.

INTRODUCTION

The American legal system contains clear class biases. The executives of Enron,

WorldCom and Global Crossing are being treated with dramatically more

leniency than poorer people suspected of far less serious misdeeds. Wealthy

shoplifters are often diagnosed as suffering from the psychological illness of

kleptomania while impoverished shoplifters are simply arrested and imprisoned

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society,Volume 29, 123–139

Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd.

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 1059-4337/PII: S1059433703290050 123

124 MAUREEN NORTON-HAWK

as thieves. Misbehaving teenage boys from the upper middle class are treated

with psychological as well as pharmacological therapies while their urban, poor

and non-white counterparts are dealt with as delinquents on the fast-track to a

criminal career (Chambliss, 1973).

A substantial literature documents the class biases in American drug law and

its enforcement (Duster, 1995; Dyer, 2000; Musto, 1999; Pollitt, 2001). The

lenient attitude toward the illicit drug use of the successful contrasts sharply with

the punitive approach applied to the substance abuse by the poor. Controlling

the underclass’s use of narcotics is a law enforcement priority while the illegal

ingestion of lifestyle drugs by the upper middle class is not. The designer drugs of

college students seem as trendy and harmless as designer jeans, not a key target of

the war on drugs. Diet pills, a term which evokes images of fashion models, movie

stars and stylish college girls trying to lose weight, are referred to as “speed”

or amphetamines when associated with underclass deviants. Historically the

possession of powder cocaine, primarily a vice of higher status individuals, has

carried less social stigma and smaller legal penalties than did being caught with

the same amount of crack cocaine; a drug associated with the underclass (Baum,

1996; Mauer, 2001).

Poor people are socially defined as drug addicts who need to be restrained

by the criminal justice system, while the rich check into exclusive clinics for

therapies designed to cure them of their substance abuse problems. Drug addict is

a “master status” for the underclass; a negative public label that overshadows all

other descriptions. As Howard Becker (1963, p. 33) observes, “[p]ossession of one

deviant trait may have a generalized symbolic value, so that people automatically

assume that its bearer possesses other undesirable traits allegedly associated with

it.” Social class plays a central role in the assigning of a master status. A heroin-

using streetwalker is labeled a hardened drug addict while Jeb Bush’s daughter’s

sentencing to two days in prison for stealing narcotics from her treatment center

is seen as an example of “tough love” (Morgan, 2002).

Poor people are arrested and imprisoned for using narcotics, while sports heroes

and movie stars are treated with compassion when they “self-medicate” with “pain

killers.” Stimulant use by professional athletes has become so commonplace that

being drug free is categorized as “playing naked” (Verducci, 2002). Sympathy

is extended to the wealthy, while moral stigma is placed upon the poor, urban,

and often, minority drug addict. Newspaper articles often blame the stresses

under which the middle classes live when they succumb to the lure of alcoholism

and addictive drugs. Lower class drug users frequently suffer considerable

amounts of anxiety, distress, loss and anguish, but longer jail terms and other

punishments are considered the proper treatment rather than stress reduction

clinics.