Georgia Straight Response re: Sex Addictions

Dear Friends,
 
This week's cover article (Nov. 20/08) in the Georgia Straight focuses on sex addiction. In the online version, you can view a short video clip of editor Charlie Smith explaining why the newspaper decided to publish an article on this topic:
 
http://www.straight.com/article-170662/too-much-sex-brain?rotator=1
 
In the clip, he explains that he wanted to let sex addicts and their families know that there is hope for them. He mentions that there are ways to address the lack of dopamine, which some researchers cited in the article attribute as the driving force behind sex addiction. One psychologist even states that "if it is an addiction, [the addict] has no choice [but to continue seeking more dopamine]."
 
A remedy that editor Charlie Smith suggests for addicts is exercise, which raises one's level of dopamine. To suggest that performing exercise and other dopamine inducing activities, alone, is the silver bullet is arguably naive and over-simplistic. Those of you familiar with the Living Waters ministry and program (www.livingwaterscanada.org/) know that there are many underlying and complex factors leading to sex addiction, which is the most prevalent addiction in today's church.
 
If Charlie Smith genuinely wants to help, he could do even better and refuse to print the numerous massage, escort, and phone sex advertisements in the back pages of his publication. The freely and widely available Georgia Straight can be a huge trigger for those whom Charlie wants to help, unlike similar online advertisements which can be blocked by using an Internet filter. Moreover, many of those advertisements -- particularly, the ones featuring Asian women -- offer sexual services provided by women who have been trafficked to Vancouver. The ads perpetuate the misery of both the men who answer them and the women featured in them, not to mention their families.
 
This section of ads has grown increasingly large and profitable over the years, to the point that I estimate it easily generates over $10,000 a week in revenue. The Georgia Straight has become addicted to this source of profit and would be extremely reluctant to abandon it as other newspapers in Britain and New York have already done. Similarly, the Georgia Straight is in the minority of Canadian publications that continues to advertise cigarette and tobacco products and has been criticized for doing so.
 
With the arrival of the Olympics in 2010, sex trafficking of women to Vancouver is bound to increase domestically and from abroad. Would you please consider writing a letter to Charlie Smith (editor), Dan McLeod (founder, editor and publisher), and other members of the editorial staff (http://www.straight.com/ref/masthead) asking them to consider dropping those back page ads for the benefit of all the women and men affected?
 
Respectfully,
Steven