The denunciation of prostitution has a long history in most civilizations and religions, whereas the emergence of various rationales for the censure of certain mind-altering substances has occurred mostly in the 20th Century and is largely a product of western thinking. The Bible contains admonitions of alcohol overindulgence but not of alcohol consumption or other mind-altering substances. However, Islam and other religions ban alcohol. The criminalization of drugs in North America began less than 90 years ago as an outgrowth of labor disputes, immigration issues, and racial bigotry, as well as alarm about addiction to cocaine and morphine. General concern existed at the same time about sexual morality and racial purity. Although Great Britain, Canada, and the United States have long controlled prostitution by provisions relating to vagrancy and lewdness, the United States first criminalized the act of selling sexual services at approximately the same time and in the same moral climate that it criminalized drugs. The premises and practices of drug policies do not appear to be clearly founded in either pharmacology or any objective measure of harmfulness. The three general strategies for controlling drugs are criminalization, therapeutic intervention, and education; the three legal approaches are prohibition, decriminalization, and legalization. Similar variations exist in the regulation of prostitution. Both phenomena must be understood in the context of international market mechanisms, gender structures, and a global class system. Note and 44 references