Colorado’s SB26-097 is being marketed as compassion. It tells us it will help victims of prostitution. It claims to reduce harm.

Great marketing but also the reason this bill is dangerous.

Legal commercial sex markets around the world like Nevada have demonstrated that when a state normalizes commercial sex, demand increases. When demand increases, illegal providers – expand activity to meet it.

In Nevada legal prostitution only has a 10% market share. 90% of commercial sex in that state is still illegal. They didn’t shrink the underground sex trade.

They increased the commercial sex industry. And so will we.

Colorado will pretend we have progress because fewer people will be arrested. That’s the political magic trick: the scoreboard changes, but the suffering does not.

And this is where lawmakers benefit from increased human trafficking. They present a bill as appeasement. They know voters are angry about rising crime.

When trafficking arrests drop, due to lack of prosecution – politicians will celebrate.

We’ve seen this before. A growing crisis like, homelessness, drug overdoses, or retail theft – receives an adjustment in measurement. Lawmakers change the definition, shift enforcement priorities, or reduce prosecution.

Advocacy organizations cheer. And voters believe the problem is solved because they don’t research the data. But the political benefits go much deeper than the optics.

This is the part nobody wants to say aloud: in our state crises don’t just create suffering. They create careers.

Once the market expands, Colorado will need “solutions.” And in Colorado, “solutions” usually mean one thing: funding streams from government with taxpayers footing the bill.

That funding will flow into an ever-expanding network of nonprofit providers; addiction centers, trauma counselors, exit organizations and the like. New boards will be formed. New contracts will be awarded.

And the industry will boom around managing the consequences of the commercial sex industry our state normalized.

Once those financial systems are built, there are new paychecks going to people in the right ideology. We’ve seen this before in Colorado, in other areas.

Homelessness is the clearest example. Remember? The crisis grew, public outrage rose and we opened the funding flood gates. Millions become billions.

Entire coalitions work on the issue. Yet the visible problem is growing. Even so, the spending never shrinks. And the crisis never ends.

SB26-097 is the kind of bill that creates this kind of crisis. The bill gives lawmakers the ability to say, “We’re doing something,” without ever having to prove they reduced exploitation.

Because when illegal trafficking rises after decriminalization, the talking points are already written for toxic media to distribute. Legislators can blame inflation, housing costs, or fentanyl. They can cite national trends. They can say the bill isn’t the cause – it simply “exposed what was already there.”

That’s plausible deniability. And political gold.

But this gets worse. If SB26-097 passes, Colorado becomes a national case study. Advocacy networks will use it as a template. The bill becomes a badge of ideological alignment.

It opens doors. It brings national endorsements. It attracts increased campaign funding and media visibility.

The scale effect expands much more than the commercial sex market.

Ironically, when SB26-097 expands trafficking, lawmakers won’t lose influence. The bigger the crisis, the more committees and task forces are needed. More “resources” must be distributed. More stakeholders get a seat at the table. More money is allocated.

The state will create an entire industry dedicated to “helping people exit human trafficking” – while quietly expanding the conditions that make exit harder.

If Colorado genuinely wanted to protect victims, it would focus on shrinking demand. It would target buyers. It would aggressively dismantle trafficking networks. It would fund housing, recovery, and job pathways without normalizing the market that traffickers exploit.

Instead, SB26-097 invites Colorado to do what it has done too often: trade measurable justice for deceptive compassion. If we pass SB26-097, we may reduce arrests. We may reduce prosecutions. We may reduce public discomfort.

But if we pass this bill – we will not reduce commercial sex exploitation. We will simply build a larger system around it. Pretending that we have made progress hurts human trafficking victims. And the rest of us.

Rachel Stovall is a Colorado Springs event manager, entertainer and community advocate.