Zohran Mamdani doesn’t highlight it in his campaign materials, but the 33-year-old mayoral candidate has endorsed a radical policy that would turn New York City into the nation’s first testing site for a fully open, decriminalized sex trade — where men would be free to buy sex without any fear of law enforcement interference and promoting prostitution would be a protected business venture.
It’s clear he hasn’t thought this through. A decriminalized commercial sex market would lead to a range of devastating social consequences. One of the most immediate impacts would be the expansion of street prostitution, gang activity, drug sales and violence.
New York City would become a sex tourism destination attracting men from across the metropolitan area — and even from international locales flocking to the city to buy sex much like Times Square prior to the mid-1990s, only this time, it’s legally protected.
De facto prostitution zones and pop-up brothels would depress real estate values and increase the strain on our overburdened city already grappling with affordability and quality-of-life issues.
Mamdani is too young to remember that version of New York, but many of us lived it. Times Square was a gritty hub of rampant prostitution, porn theaters, and predatory crime. Women avoided walking alone. Entire neighborhoods became no-go zones for families.
One of the most alarming consequences of decriminalizing the sex trade is the increased danger to minors. Traffickers and predators already target teens through TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat — and legitimizing the sex industry would only embolden them. A 2024 Global Child Safety Institute report found that one in nine U.S. men — roughly 14 million — have admitted to online sexual offenses against children.
With law enforcement sidelined and the sex industry legitimized, the barriers protecting young people from exploitation would erode quickly, making it easier for predators to lure, manipulate, and profit from minors under the false promises of love and the threat or use of violence.
This isn’t progress. It’s reckless, dangerous and profoundly anti-woman, anti-child and anti-family.
Mamdani, his elected allies and the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) will argue decriminalization is the best way to keep women in prostitution safe from the police. Mamdani said state violence against women must end and that “sex work” must be “decriminalized to get cops out of people’s lives.”
That’s a cheap shot at law enforcement. In reality, New York City has long recognized that prostitution is detrimental to society and has invested in building highly trained and specialized teams that dismantle criminal networks and, in collaboration with community groups and service providers, identify victims and help them find a way out of the sex trade.
Decriminalizing soliciting, patronizing, and even low-level promotion of prostitution would strip law enforcement of the ability to investigate abuse, build cases against exploiters, and intervene to prevent the cycle of exploitation from perpetuating.
Democratic socialists will say that legalizing the sex trade will provide not only safety, but dignity to these women who are repeatedly bought by nameless men. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In countries like Germany and New Zealand, the sex trade exploded when it was decriminalized. So did organized trafficking, violent crime, and the recruitment of poor women, immigrant women and women in desperate straits. Sex buyers became more aggressive, not safer. And the commodification of women was normalized — treating prostitution as just a job.
But It’s not a job like any other. By the time people used in prostitution exit the sex trade, the vast majority have been subjected to a wide range of physical and psychological traumas, have chronic health issues as a result, have retained little of the income they generated, and have limited hope for employment as a result of missed opportunities for education and work experience. Many have had childhoods marked by poverty, and family instability, and often abuse.
Mamdani touts himself as a progressive with a vision for a more equal New York. Endorsing a policy that condemns marginalized women and girls to being bought and sold on a marketplace is not equality. What a bleak, cynical approach to governance, one that fails to address the root causes of poverty and vulnerability in society.
No elected official should be proud to send the message that because some women engage in “survival sex” the answer is to green-light their exploitation. But that is easier than building a strong economy that produces good jobs.
New Yorkers want a leader who will build a stronger economy, expand real opportunity, and protect the vulnerable — not turn our city into a playground for the manosphere.
Ossorio is the executive director of National Organization for Women NYC.
