A. Massage professionals and businesses providing massage therapy promote public health and well-being with therapeutic practices that temper aches and pains, ease stress, reduce blood pressure, and provide other valuable health benefits.
B. In communities across the United States, illicit massage businesses are known venues for human trafficking. Traffickers in these venues commonly operate by opening establishments that are disguised as legitimate massage or bodywork businesses. In the process, they secure legally required licenses and licensure to conceal their actual activities: sex trafficking and/or forced labor. As a result, these human trafficking venues are blending in with and operating next to other legitimate businesses in urban business districts, suburban strip malls, and rural towns throughout the U.S.
C. The city does not conflate these illicit businesses with legitimate massage businesses and massage practitioners. This chapter seeks to exercise the city's authority to regulate both massage practitioners and massage businesses in such a way as to support and encourage legitimate massage practitioners and massage businesses, while discouraging illicit massage businesses and removing all illicit massage business from the city. (Ord. 2019-24, 9-10-2019)