Illicit Businesses: Whose Problem Is It?

Why Nobody Is Stopping the Sex Businesses Hiding Behind Massage — And Who Should Be.

A journalist recently said that the problem of suspected sexually oriented businesses (SOBs) disguised as massage is “the massage board’s problem.”

A city council member said it’s a law enforcement problem.

A police chief said it’s a board of massage problem.

The board of massage says it’s a law enforcement thing.

A state legislator said it’s a a federal government problem.

A county official said it’s massage therapists problem so lets put more regulation sanctions on them.

AMTA and ABMP say:

“Human trafficking is an indefensible act and, globally, very prevalent, but it isn’t a massage therapy fight. It’s a distraction from our mission to promote massage therapy as a means for health.”"

Meanwhile….The problem is we have illicit businesses disguised as massage businesses all over our cities, towns and states and we have many human trafficking task forces in states and cities but no one is talking to each other.

What These Ordinances Are Actually Doing

When a city faces political pressure to “do something” about suspected sex businesses hiding behind the word massage, they have two choices.

They can go after the criminal operators directly — which requires law enforcement resources, prosecutorial will, interagency coordination, and political courage to pursue organized crime. It isn’t just sex work or unlicensed massage. These places are usually involved in money laundering, racketeering and human trafficking. That is hard, expensive, and slow.

Or they can regulate massage businesses — which requires a city ordinance, a council vote, and a press release. That is easy, cheap, and fast. Often they do not even know the difference between a licensed massage therapist who are often healthcare providers and these illicit businesses hiding in plain sight. One council member asked how long has this been going on and the prosecutor answered since the 1990’s.

So they regulate massage businesses. Every time.

The result is that they are attempting to control what happens inside suspected sex businesses by adding rules to licensed massage therapists. The businesses actually selling sex are not complying with the old rules or the new ones. The legitimate massage businesses — the ones that were never the problem — are now buried under more paperwork, more inspection risk, more regulatory burden. The city councils and law enforcement are not enforcing the laws we have now for licensed massage therapists—how will they be able to enforce even stricter regulations?

Here is the clearest way I know to say this:

**Establishment licensing laws and city ordinances put the responsibility on the massage therapy profession, not on the bad actors and the Johns who make these places profitable. Responsibility needs to be returned to real cause of the problem and stop these places from opening in the first place rather than going after them after they are open and established.

As I have studied this, I have gone through many stages of what really needs to be done and have a list of things that are being tried and could be tried, but today after hours of research into ordinances I think these ordinances need to stop. State establishment licensing is the next best option but once again it puts the burden on licensed massage therapists. City business licensing requiring owners of massage businesses to show they have hired only licensed massage therapists is another option…but do you think the illicit businesses would even apply for a license?

And here is the critical piece nobody says in public:

**You cannot regulate a criminal problem with an administrative solution. A board’s job is to control licensees. It cannot control those who are not licensed without law enforcement and the criminal justice system.**

Think about how we handle other licensed professions. We know doctors should not be drug dealers — but the laws regulating doctors do not explicitly prohibit drug dealing. Why? Because drug dealing is a crime. It is handled by law enforcement, not by medical boards. The medical board handles unprofessional conduct by licensed physicians. The criminal justice system handles the drug dealing.

We have spent decades trying to get the massage board to solve a problem that belongs to the criminal justice system. That is backwards. And it has not worked.

We Are Regulating Sex Workers Through Massage Therapists

Here is the observation that should change this entire conversation.

When these ordinances add new requirements — license display, ID verification, hours restrictions, cash prohibitions — they are aimed at businesses using the word massage. Some of those businesses are legitimate healthcare practices. Some are suspected SOBs. The legitimate businesses comply. The suspected SOBs do not.

So the practical effect of every new ordinance is to add regulatory burden to legitimate massage therapists while doing nothing to the criminal operators who were not complying anyway.

We are regulating the suspected sex workers by regulating the licensed massage therapists. We are controlling behavior in suspected criminal operations by adding paperwork to the people who had nothing to do with the crime.

This is not hypothetical. It is exactly what is happening.

The Right Frame — And the Right Fix

Your own state’s research on this problem contains the answer. Let me make it explicit.

**The right frame is not massage regulation. It is sexually oriented business regulation.**

Define sexually oriented businesses to include any enterprise that meets the definition — whether it holds a massage license or not. Prohibit any sexually oriented business from providing massage, bodywork, or touching of any kind. Put the violation in the sexually oriented business code, not the massage therapy code.

This matters enormously. You should not arrest someone for violating massage therapy codes because they were engaging in prostitution. You should arrest them for violating sexually oriented business codes, for prostitution, for human trafficking. Keep the massage therapy code clean. Keep the violations where they belong — in the criminal code, not the professional licensing code.

**The second piece is a state-level Human Trafficking Task Force with real authority and real funding.** Housed in the Attorney General’s office. With a mandate to coordinate between state, local, and federal authorities. With investigators who can cross jurisdictional lines. With prosecutors assigned to build financial cases — money laundering, tax evasion, RICO — that do not depend on victim testimony. With the authority to act across counties so that shutting down in Kent does not just move the problem to Federal Way.

**The third piece is returning enforcement responsibility to law enforcement** — with the funding to match. That means the legislature has to appropriate it. Which means massage therapists, anti-trafficking organizations, city councils, and community members have to make enough noise that legislators feel more pressure to fund enforcement than to ignore it.

Local jurisdictions do not have the resources to conduct major investigations. That is one of the main reasons they are passing establishment licensing ordinances — because they are trying to solve a problem that requires state-level resources using city-level tools. The state needs to step up and give them those resources.

They need to do full investigations on each place (over 17,000 in the US) and get them on human trafficking and the main problem is finding support for the women who often don’t even know they are being trafficked. They sign contracts willingly with these traffickers looking for a better life and money for their families back in China and Korea and wherever they come from.

What We Are Demanding

We are licensed massage therapists. We are healthcare providers. We completed state-approved education, passed licensing examinations, and submitted to background checks. We work in clinics, hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and private practices. We help people recover from injury and manage chronic conditions.

We are not the problem.

We have watched criminal networks hide behind our profession’s name for over a hundred years. We have watched ordinance after ordinance add burden to our practices while doing nothing to dismantle the organizations exploiting our name. We have watched agencies point at each other while thousands of suspected sex businesses operate openly in our communities.

We are done waiting for someone to figure out whose problem this is.

**It is a crime problem. It belongs to law enforcement, prosecutors, and the criminal justice system — properly funded, properly coordinated, and properly focused on the operators and traffickers, not on the workers and not on the therapists.**

Regulate sex businesses as sex businesses.

Fund the task forces.

Return responsibility to law enforcement.

Enforce what already exists before creating more.

And leave licensed massage therapists — who did everything right — out of it.