if porn is addictive, do we ban it?

At The Public Discourse, Morgan Bennett writes,

Internet pornography is a “monstrous injustice,” and the time for its abolition has come.

She makes some excellent points in a pair of articles though I disagree with her conclusion.

In The New Narcotic, she talks about the addictive effects of repeated viewing of pornography. Viewing pornography can be more addictive than hard drugs like cocaine or heroin. Because pornographic images, once seen, stay in memory and can be recalled consciously or unconsciously, porn addictions can have a more lasting effect than using drugs that do not remain forever in the user's system.

...internet pornography does more than just spike the level of dopamine in the brain for a pleasure sensation. It literally changes the physical matter within the brain so that new neurological pathways require pornographic material in order to trigger the desired reward sensation. ...

Pornography, by both arousing (the “high” effect via dopamine) and causing an orgasm (the “release” effect via opiates), is a type of polydrug that triggers both types of addictive brain chemicals in one punch, enhancing its addictive propensity as well as its power to instigate a pattern of increasing tolerance. Tolerance in pornography’s case requires not necessarily greater quantities of pornography but more novel pornographic content like more taboo sexual acts, child pornography, or sadomasochistic pornography.  [My emphasis.]

Powerful stuff. The idea that this is all freely available--and can be used in privacy and anonymity--is worrisome. Kids who happen onto, or search out, porn have no idea what they may have started. For that matter, neither do adults. An addiction to legal pornography can lead a regular viewer to more novel content, images of more taboo sexual acts. The easy availability of porn on the internet inevitably leads to more people looking at illegal images.

Just as not everyone who has a beer ends up an addict, not every porn consumer will end up addicted to child porn. Some will and the numbers will increase over time.

In Internet Pornography & the First Amendment, she makes a persuasive argument that internet pornography damages both society and personal relationships. The pervasiveness of pornography, freely available and available at all times, is bound to have an effect on society.

If I could, with a stroke of luck or genius or my pen, make all pornography vanish, I would do it. Alas, I cannot. And neither can legislators.

First, local, state, and federal governments should enforce the current obscenity-related laws already on the books. Nearly every state has anti-obscenity laws. The enforcement of those laws would send a message that the production and distribution of obscene material is unacceptable in a civilized society. Second, local and national groups should run billboard, TV, and internet advertising campaigns to expose the harms of internet pornography to the public. 

Looking beyond those “first steps,” I would argue for the eventual enactment of new laws that would censor obscene internet pornography.

Pornography is too easily created, too easily distributed, and too appealing to the curious for it ever to be successfully abolished. Did the prohibition of alcohol stop people from drinking booze? Has the prohibition on marijuana made pot unavailable? Has the ban on child pornography stopped production or downloading?

Have we truly learned nothing from those efforts?

What the ban on pot and other drugs has done is put millions of people in prison and vacuumed over $1 trillion out of taxpayer pockets...all without reducing drug use. Putting thousands and thousands of people in prison for possessing illegal pornography has done nothing to reduce the amount of child porn available.

Another effect of prohibiting child pornography has been to make it impossible for child porn addicts to ask for help to stop. Morgan Bennett, in The New Narcotic, nicely outlines how addictive pornography can be and in Internet Pornography & the First Amendment she wants to penalize those with that addiction. Compassionate, she's not.

Imagine those efforts applied to currently-legal porn as well. How many more would we incarcerate? How many more families would be torn apart by the justice system? How many breadwinners would spend years in prison when therapy or 12-step groups would have served them better?

Her suggestion that we educate the public on the dangers of porn is sensible. Something related has been suggested before.

Censorship or abolition of any kind of pornography is, quite simply, impossible. To attempt to do that will destroy more families than the porn itself does.