If you read Reason (to steal a line from you), you know that laws prohibiting narcotics and prostitution are unethical and cause both activities to be more dangerous by forcing them underground.
It is beyond the power of U.S. attorneys to legalize either activity, but they are not beyond blame for enforcing unethical laws, and it is clearly baseless to blame private business for not helping them do so.
I do read reason. I think marijuana should be completely legalized and sold like liquor is. I think we may end up having to regulate narcotics instead of criminalizing them. I think total bans on prostitution don't make much sense.
But I also think that meth labs, street-level hand-to-hand narcotics trading, and street-level prostitution are illegal for good reason.
Do you think backroom meth labs and street-level prostitution would exist if professionalized alternatives were available? How many people have died from tainted homemade liquor purchased in speakaeasies since that type of prohibition ended?
That's the problem with your argument. This isn't a story of a negligent businessman allowing riff-raff to fester. It's a story of a social problem caused entirely by the government, being used to take property from a private business who didn't do enough to help them enforce their destructive laws.
It is beyond the power of U.S. attorneys to legalize either activity, but they are not beyond blame for enforcing unethical laws, and it is clearly baseless to blame private business for not helping them do so.