Don O’Neill questions latest bikini barista bust: ‘They should just legalize that’

The owner of Java Juggs, a well-known series of bikini barista stands in south Snohomish County, pleaded guilty to charges of promoting prostitution and money laundering Tuesday.

The Everett Herald reports Carmela Panico, 52, was alleged to have been running what prosecutors said amounted to drive-thru brothels. They report she made approximately $2 million in three years, and the baristas in her stands made hundreds of thousands.

Ron & Don Show host Don O’Neil notes that is very good business, and wonders whether it should just be made legal.

“I think what they should do is they should just legalize that. I don’t have a problem with prostitution and sex acts and all that other stuff,” says Don. “There’s a reason why, it’s really the oldest trade.”

He compares it to the legalization of marijuana, which the state decided to go into partially because of the money they could make from taxation. “As far as sex acts go, think about all the money that exchanges hands.”

Don says prostitution is not going away, people are going to engage in the trade, but if government steps in to regulate it and tax it, there could be more monitoring and control.

“You’re able to put it somewhere where it’s away from kids and schools and people that don’t want to be around it,” says Don. “Then also you can make some real arrests when it comes to endangering children, when it comes to sex trafficking.”

Co-host Ron Upshaw says he’s seen a legal sex trade like this in action in Amsterdam.

“You go to Amsterdam, you know where the red light district is. You walk down the red light district and everybody knows what is happening, you don’t see children there,” says Ron. “There are females and some males that stand in a picture-frame window and you walk down there and if you see a girl you’re interested in, she comes over to the door, you talk to her, you negotiate the deal.”

Imagining something like this being implemented in the Puget Sound area though still seems a ways off, Ron says.

“I don’t think the citizens of Seattle are ready for that,” says Ron. “I think going from where it is now to let’s have a red light district where you can drive thru and either get a sex act or get a pole dance from your car, I think we’re not there yet.”

But he does think maybe we should be moving in the direction of legalization for a some of the sex working population. He cites an example he heard on Dan Savage’s Savage Love podcast.

“I remember one interview he did with a woman. I think she had somewhere between 15 and 20 men she had long-term relationships with,” says Ron. “They would schedule regular sessions with her and they came to her apartment. She got paid a lot of money to provide this service that happened to be sex work. She wasn’t a street walker. She wasn’t putting ads in the back of backpage. She was kind of a professional sex worker.”

In a scenario like this, Ron thinks legalization could be a good thing.

“I think if you’re a professional sex worker and you are safe and you get tested, like the one I described I heard an interview with, I think that should be legal and taxed and regulated,” he says. “Obviously, the sex trafficking ones, anything involving minors, anything where it’s coercion, street walkers, if you’re drugged and high, or if you’re pimped out and beaten, all of those categories I think should not be allowed, and we should prosecute people like that.”

But licensing for sex work should not be out of the question, says Ron.

“I think that there should be a space carved out for if someone wants to have a professional sex workers license, that they should be allowed to do that.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.