Despite there being a legal option, the vast majority of prostitution in Nevada takes place illegally in Reno and Las Vegas. (it isn't due to the distance, from Reno or Vegas, you can drive 15 minutes and find a brothel across county lines) About 66 times more money is spent by customers on illegal prostitution in Nevada than in the regulated brothels.
In her 2007 report, Prostitution and trafficking in Nevada: making the connections, Melissa Farley presents the results of numerous interviews with brothel owners and prostitutes, she says that most brothel prostitutes are controlled by outside pimps and that they suffer widespread abuse by brothel owners and customers. Farley said that "What happens in legal brothels is sexual harassment, sexual exploitation and sometimes rape; she also said more than 80% of the women she had interviewed told her they wanted to leave prostitution.Teri, a prostitute who has worked in a Nevada brothel (and who would like prostitution to be decriminalized), stated that "The brothel owners are worse than any pimp. They abuse and imprison women and are fully protected by the state"
--Wikipedia (sorry for so many quotes)
I don't have any friends that have worked as prostitutes, but I had a few friends in high school that started working at strip clubs at ~15-16 years old. You can bet there are younger girls working at legal brothels. Just because prostitution is legal won't help the girls involved with it at all.
EDIT: I worked in an office that would do free tattoo removal treatments for girls that we caught up in sex trafficking. They would be branded with their pimps name on various parts of their body. Most of them got in it young, and took them many years to get out. This was not just 1 girl, it was a lot.
Both Reno and Las Vegas are huge gambling towns. It is likely that the people who partake in illegally obtaining prostitutes in these areas are from out of state and would do so in their home state as well. Many of the characters found in casinos are unlikely to be those with great morals, and would therefore be more likely to not care whether the prostitute they are hiring is legal or not.
This is not an issue having to do with the legalization of prostitution, but instead with the types of people found in cities known for gambling.
Other cities known for casinos, such as Atlantic City, NJ, have had some of the largest sex trafficing operations found. (Source: http://www.nj.com/ne..._arrests.html)�
It is also possible that the issue lies not within prostitution itself, but within the brothels.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a woman deciding for herself "I want to have sex and charge people for it." Which is what should be legal.
What should not be legal however is a man taking a group of unwilling women and deciding "I am going to make these ladies have sex to get myself money" because that is sexual exploitation.