Selling Vulnerability: Sex Trafficking, Opioids, and Eradicating the Demand

KENTUCKY LAW JOURNAL SYMPOSIUM

This year’s Symposium will take place virtually and is scheduled for Friday, February 5, 2021. The topic is Selling Vulnerability: Sex Trafficking, Opioids, and Eradicating the Demand. The symposium will address the intersection of human trafficking issues with the ongoing opioid epidemic.

Our nation is experiencing a meteoric rise in opioid overdose. The sheer power of opioid dependency has left few untouched and many devastated in its wake. Inextricably intertwined with opioid dependency is an equally epidemic rise in sex trafficking. Like no other point in its 5,000-year history, sex trafficking is on a sharp upsurge: The internet has expanded the insatiable demand for vulnerable human flesh. As the internet increases the scope of the flesh trade, opioid addiction adds to its sting. Millions are feeding their dependency through the selling of flesh.

Sex trafficking exists conterminously with drug dependency because vulnerability is the lynchpin of exploitation. This conference, the first of its kind, will examine the converging and rising tides of sex trafficking and opioid addiction. This conference has three aims: Awareness, Advocacy, and Activism.  Using a panel of experts who have first-hand experience with the intertwined effects of sex trafficking and opioid addiction, this conference will increase the public awareness of the converging forces of dependency and vulnerability.  A second panel of advocates will address how the legal process can intervene in the demand for human flesh.  Finally, a third panel of activists will critique the current problems in the criminal justice system’s attempt to ameliorate the intertwined problem of drug dependency and sex trafficking through mass incarceration.

Please register and find the biographies for all of our panelists using the buttons below: