Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Prisons increasingly contend with rotting 'meth mouths'

MARYVILLE, Mo. - Jeffery Lotshaw flossed regularly. He brushed faithfully, sometimes four or five times in a day.

All that care makes his condition seem incomprehensible: At the age of 33, Lotshaw's grin is toothless. His teeth all broke apart, tarnished with yellow and black.

"Before I started doing meth, I didn't have a cavity in my head," said Lotshaw, imprisoned on drug charges at Missouri's Maryville Treatment Center.

The growing use of highly addictive methamphetamine throughout the country is creating a prominent scar on an increasing number of users: rotting, brittle teeth that seem to crumble from their mouths.

Methamphetamine can be made with a horrid mix of substances, including over-the-counter cold medicine, fertilizer, battery acid and hydrogen peroxide.

Together, the chemicals reduce a user's saliva, which neutralizes acids and physically clears food from the teeth, said Dr. Eric Curtis, an Arizona-based spokesman for the Academy of General Dentistry.

"When the saliva isn't flowing, the bacteria build up a lot faster," said Dr. Darrell Morton, an Atlanta dentist.

Meth users also may neglect their teeth or moisten their dry mouths with high-sugar drinks, and anxiety caused by the drug prompts them to grind their teeth, which speeds decay.

The problem is particularly noticeable among inmates, whose oral problems have some prison systems struggling to provide dental care.

"They're rotting teeth, missing teeth, rotting way into the gums," said Kathy Bachmeier, the head of medical services for North Dakota's prisons. "It's ugly."

There are no statistics on "meth mouth" because addicts sometimes are reluctant to admit their drug use and because it is difficult to distinguish between damage done by bad dental hygiene and that caused by narcotics. But there are signs it is on the rise around the country.

The head of the company in charge of dental care for Missouri inmates says he is seeing teeth rotted by meth use nearly every day. In North Dakota, the number of days a dentist was serving inmates jumped from 50 in 2000 to 78 in 2004. And the tab for inmates' dental care in Minnesota rose from $1.2-million five years ago to about $2-million last year.

Lotshaw has been drug-free for more than five months, but there's no denying what is to blame for his empty mouth.

"It reminds me a lot of my addiction," he said.

[Last modified February 6, 2005, 00:23:11]