The porn industry in the smut capital of America, Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, is going limp.

See also: Porn Defends the Money Shot.

So says the adult-business trade group Free Speech Coalition, which cites plummeting film permit numbers in a statement this week and blames L.A. County's mandatory condom rule for a pronounced softening of local smut production.

FilmLA, which administers permits for the city of Los Angeles, unincorporated L.A. County, and seven other local cities such as Lancaster and Palmdale, confirms the figures.

Through mid-September, there had been only 24 permits issued in 2013 for adult films in the areas covered by FilmLA, spokesman Philip Sokoloski told us.

That compares with about 480 permits a year previously, according to FilmLA's estimations. (Sokoloski says that until the condom law was enacted, FilmLA didn't differentiate between adult and non-adult fare, but that it made some educated guesses.)

The Free Speech Coalition says that at about $1,000 a permit, the dive in production has cost the jurisdictions covered by FilmLA nearly a half million dollars in lost paperwork fees alone.

The condom initiative, Measure B, passed last year and covers most of L.A. County. It mandates condom use in porn. The controversial rule simply reflects regulations already in place under California and federal workplace safety mandates, state officials have said.

Credit: Keith Plocek/LA Weekly

Credit: Keith Plocek/LA Weekly

The business has tried to block the county law in court but so far has been unsuccessful.

See also: Porn's Condom Rule Stays, But it Might Be Hard to Enforce.

The porn industry has long argued that mandatory condoms would force production to leave town or, worse, to go underground where there's no regulation. Sokoloski of FilmLA said his organization has seen no uptick in complaints about nonpermitted adult filmmaking.

Industry spokespeople say consumers don't want to see condom porn, and that its twice-a-month STD testing protocol for performers works to quash AIDS and other diseases.

Free Speech Coalition CEO Diane Duke:

We predicted that lost jobs and revenue would be one of the results of AIDS Healthcare Foundation's (AHF) misguided attempts to police the adult industry. As a result of the passage of Measure B, hundreds of thousands of dollars in permit fees have gone elsewhere — and that does not take into consideration the jobs and vendor revenues that have followed the productions out of L.A. County and for some companies, out of the state of California entirely.

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