Money makes the world go round…

That song title is used for several different seemingly unrelated songs all with the same theme. Money does in fact make the world go round.

There's virtually nothing that is not increased or made better or bigger or bolder in the absence of an increased amount of money. 

You can have all the Faith in the world and ideas for ministry development and yet money will determine how large that ministry can become.

Money drives so much of our society, some might say all of society. There are too many examples to try to begin illustrating my point.

But here's one example that we should really be looking at and the primary purpose of this blog… 

90% of all the women on the streets of Kensington are reliant on prostitution, more commonly known on the street as 'doing a date', so as to raise the needed money to purchase the drugs that they need in the midst of their active drug addiction. Now hold that thought for a minute… 

70% of all the men on the streets of Kensington are 100% reliant on that 90% of women to financially support the purchase of their drugs for their drug addiction.

For the sake of easy math, let's say that the number of men and the number of women are equal on the streets of Kensington. That would mean that 80% of all of the money needed for the purchase of illegal drugs to support drug addiction on the streets of Kensington comes through prostitution.

We are forever hearing about the women being caught up in sting operations and being arrested for prostitution. Their need to raise money in this way is something they're not proud of as they are employed in the only mode of employment they can find to fund their substance use. Their substance use is a requirement of their drug addiction which is a medically recognized disease officially known as substance use disorder.

We arrest the patient in our current system of doing things but we do not arrest the ones hiring the women for the act of prostitution. If law enforcement would start to go after the men who are picking up the women, the flow of money would decrease and we might start to see an end or at least a slowing of the current situation.

So why are the men not arrested for engaging in prostitution with a patient suffering with substance use disorder? From one of the women, I heard of her frequent 'date', an attorney who is an employee of the city of Philadelphia. I've heard of other people in positions of authority in various ways who, with their position of authority, can sway the system in their favor and keep the men from being arrested. 

Let's look at this issue and start focusing on the ones providing the money to the patients who would rather not be patients at all in this deadly game of prostitution for money for drugs.

Money makes the world go round…