State Investigates Flynt Productions

The California Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Occupational Safety and Health, the state's workplace health and safety regulatory and watchdog organization, has opened a formal investigation of Larry Flynt Productions, the adult entertainment empire headed by porn impresario Larry Flynt, according to sources at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. The investigation was opened September 14 after OSHA officials visited Flynt's corporate headquarters in Beverly Hills.

The state agency opened its investigation following the filing of a formal Notice of Safety or Health Hazards complaint with Cal/OSHA by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in August 2010. AHF's complaint asserted that Flynt's films demonstrate unsafe - potentially life-threatening - behavior in a California workplace, since the sexual acts filmed without participating performers using condoms depict the unprotected exchange of bodily fluids.

AHF supported its Cal/OSHA complaint with the submission of 100 Flynt Productions adult DVDs filmed under various brands in which the performers do not wear condoms. AHF held a protest in front of Flynt's headquarters in Beverly Hills the day its OSHA complaint was filed.

AHF had previously filed similar worker safety complaints with Cal/OSHA (in August 2009) against 16 California-based adult film companies, including Flynt's Hustler Video. Prior to the opening of the Flynt investigation, Cal/OSHA had opened investigations into three of the 16 companies and the agency indicated it is still evaluating and considering additional possible investigations.

"Larry Flynt is quite outspoken in his strenuous opposition to condom use in his adult film productions. That is why we filed additional workplace health and safety complaints with Cal/OSHA in August, to press for the enforcement of state workplace regulatory guidelines which would require the use of condoms in his - and all - adult films produced in California," says Michael Weinstein, president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. "As a global HIV and STD medical care provider, we saw it as our duty to pursue action on the issue of safety in the workplace - in these instances, unprotected sex acts taking place in albeit nontraditional workplaces - the porn sets located throughout the San Fernando Valley that are churning out billions of dollars of adult fare every day. We sincerely thank Cal/OSHA for opening this formal investigation of a California employer who shows so little regard for the health and safety of his workers."

According to figures cited by DPH, there were 2,013 documented cases of chlamydia among L.A. porn performers between 2003 and 2007. In the same period 965 cases of gonorrhea were documented. Many performers suffer multiple infections. In the period April 2004 to March 2008 there have been 2,847 STD infections diagnosed among 1,884 performers in the hardcore industry in L.A. County. DPH attributes the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases in the porn industry to a lack of protective equipment for partners, including condoms.