1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Sex Trafficking Demand Reduction Act . 2. Findings Congress finds the following: (1) It has been the longstanding position of the United States to reduce the demand for sex trafficking victims. There is also a wide international consensus on the necessity of demand reduction in order to prevent human trafficking. (2) The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime of 2000 (also referred to as the Palermo Protocol(s) ) expressly addresses the requirement that nations make serious efforts to reduce demand for trafficked persons. (3) Article nine, addressing prevention of human trafficking specifically directs that, States Parties shall adopt or strengthen legislative or other measures, such as educational, social or cultural measures, including through bilateral and multilateral cooperation, to discourage the demand that fosters all forms of exploitation of persons, especially women and children, that leads to trafficking. . (4) The United Nations Protocol, the Europe Convention on Action against Human Trafficking, and the 2011 European Union Directive of the European Parliament and the Council on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings, also specifically address the need to prevent human trafficking by reducing demand for trafficking victims. (5) Research has shown that legal prostitution increases the demand for prostituted persons and thus increases the market for sex. As a result, there is a significant increase in instances of human trafficking. (6) In 2012 researchers Seo-Young Cho, Axel Dreher, and Eric Neumayer published their findings that demonstrated the scale effect of legalizing prostitution leads to an expansion of the prostitution market and thus an increase in human trafficking, while the substitution effect reduces demand for trafficked prostitutes by favoring prostitutes who have legal