Drug Use and Sex Trafficking

By Frank Stasio,

Published September 7, 2011 at 11:29 AM EDT

Decades after the beginning of the war on drugs, America's desire for illicit substances has not abated. North Carolina has become a hot spot of both drug activity and sex trafficking, and state leaders are coming together to address the problem. The conference, “Reducing Harm and Building Communities: Addressing Drug Use in the South," will be held in Durham tomorrow and Friday at RTI International. Host Frank Stasio talks about drug use, sex work, and the conference with Jill Brenneman, a Raleigh sex worker and program coordinator for Sex Workers without Borders; Robert Childs, executive director of the NC Harm Reduction Coalition; and Lieutenant Colonel Marty Sumner, deputy chief of the High Point Police Department.

Frank Stasio

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.

See stories by Frank Stasio

Alex Granados

Alex Granados joined The State of Things in July 2010. He got his start in radio as an intern for the show in 2005 and loved it so much that after trying his hand as a government reporter, reader liaison, features, copy and editorial page editor at a small newspaper in Manassas, Virginia, he returned to WUNC. Born in Baltimore but raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, Alex moved to Raleigh in time to do third grade twice and adjust to public school after having spent years in the sheltered confines of a Christian elementary education. Alex received a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also has a minor in philosophy, which basically means that he used to think he was really smart but realized he wasn’t in time to switch majors. Fishing, reading science fiction, watching crazy movies, writing bad short stories, and shooting pool are some of his favorite things to do. Alex still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up, but he is holding out for astronaut.

See stories by Alex Granados