Whether Croydon is "a vice hot spot" is of little interest to me (Guardian, August 25).

Rather what concerns me most is the very existence of the flesh trade in itself that belittle and endanger a part of our humanity.

Against the Sex in the City Report published by the Poppy Project, we have to ask which one we are controlling or eradicating; prostitution or human trafficking or both.

Often times we make noise over the monstrosity of prostitution but we lay the blame on the doorstep of human trafficking and the criminal syndicates behind it.

But thick silence is maintained on how to effectively deal with prostitution. Hence the vicious circle continues.

The Poppy Project report is equally guilty of this. It has done a M25 reshuffling of analysis to lay the blame on the doorsteps of trafficking. Human trafficking is no less an integral part of the prostitution industry than drug trafficking is to the hard drug industry.

Prostitution is a cancer: a coalition of several malignant practices in the society over time. It is a synecdoche: an expression of other problems.

It is a plague: thriving on mistaken understanding and defective methods of control.

One may be tempted to conclude definitively that poverty and unemployment is the crucial root cause.

It is. But the contribution of greed, materialism and absence of the sense of self-esteem must not be overlooked.

And in fact, they are principal to why some ladies are not forced but volunteering themselves.

According to the Home Office, 1,420 women are trafficked annually into the UK for sexual exploitation.

But as disclosed by the 2001 UN Global report on crime and justice, Thailand has between 40,000 to 50,000 women serving as prostitutes in Japan alone.

Asian prostitutes in US and Japan often sell for up to $20,000 each while African women imported into Belgium are sold for $8,000 per head to local brothels and sex retailers.

In some parts of Nigeria very notorious for traffickers, some parents spare no effort in handing their young girls over to the syndicates.

In a striking case, two men were reported to have raped a 17 year old girl supervised by her father who claimed that her daughter was too unenterprising, naive, and inexperienced for the task of seeking financial breakthrough for her family with which "her gender has destined her."

Hence her own father decided to induct her in this mischievous way so as to give her a taste of what was to come.

Why must our celebrity culture dress rape' in fame? Why do we glory in strip-teasing, voyeurisms, telephone sex, the page three girls?

Why do we find animals engaging women in sexual bouts entertaining?

Why must our musical videos, advertisements be replete with pornification'?

In as much as we do take delights in these, then we are making market of the flesh profitable, we are indirectly luring more women to become entrapped in the trade; we are inviting the human traffickers to do more and to harm more women and young girls.

It is high time we begin to refuse, to resist and to organise dissent against our social orientation that has become over-sexualised.

It should be much more of a sustained moral act than a legal action.

Damola Awoyokun Ash Tree Way Croydon