The principal question posed is whether the issue of human trafficking has become a vehicle for other causes on the agendas of individuals, organizations, interests groups, and governments. The focus is on trafficking in women in the 1990s. Although women from around the world have long been involved in the sex business in large European cities, in the 1970s the proportion of foreign-born sex workers in those cities began to increase rapidly; in the 1980s, most of these foreign women were from the developing countries of Africa and South America, and by the 1990s women from Eastern and Central Europe had become a major new commodity for work in the sex industry. In the 1990s, the media gave increasing attention to this pattern of trafficking in women across national borders to participate in the sex industries of the large European cities. Issues that have attracted the media are aggressive recruitment into prostitution, the exploitation and deception of women who are coerced or manipulated into sex work, the involvement of organized crime, and the large profit being made by criminal organizations. The scale of the problem and associated illegal immigration have also received media attention. The burgeoning problem of trafficking in women is complex and multifaceted, logically requiring a comprehensive, multipronged, national and international strategy to counter it; however, such an approach has been impeded by narrow definitions of the problem and a tendency to focus on only one aspect of the problem while attacking and undermining other perspectives and tactics for addressing it. 10 notes and 27 references