To the editor:

Need a massage? Lawrence police and the Douglas County attorney don’t think so. They think you’re looking for, to use a polite expression, sexual services, and they’re proposing an ordinance which requires massage therapists to make their clients’ contact information available to police, and allows police officers to walk in (with guns?) while a highly trained health care professional is fixing your sciatica.

Their excuse? They want to stop the serious crime of human trafficking (no argument there) and since those folks also use the word “massage,” well, let’s treat all massage therapists like potential human traffickers, right? Wrong. Furthermore, the health privacy act known as HIPAA mandates that health professionals protect the privacy and security of their clients’ health information. So this ordinance clashes with the legal and ethical responsibilities of massage therapists under HIPAA.

There are many ways to stop human trafficking. But the proposed ordinance isn’t one of them. The local massage therapy community has good suggestions to put forward. The City Commission meeting on March 7 will discuss this issue. If you’ve ever been helped by a massage therapist (I know I have) please call the city commissioners about this issue and, better yet, show up at the commission meeting.