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Comment by bityard | Hacker News Reader

Small towns in North America are are being decimated by meth. The drug dealers move in because there are no drug task forces, just underfunded and ill-equipped sheriffs and local police.

My wife and I live in the suburbs now but grew up in a very rural community. Last year we went to a wedding there. It was shocking how many people under the age of 50 were missing half their teeth.

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Are you fairly confident that they’re missing teeth because of drug use? Could it alternatively be caused by lack of access to proper dental care?

>there are no drug task forces

What is this going to fix exactly?

Putting half the population in jail?

Is it the government's job to enforce people's teeth? I presume you also observed something worse than that but chose not to write about it?

I believe they were using their teeth (or lack thereof) to reference their visible meth addiction. See GP, "2) meth is neurodegenerative. heavy users end up with a permanent disability."

Yeah but if teeth are the worst of it, that's not really the government's problem. The government doesn't prohibit alcohol to prevent liver damage and that's worse than tooth damage. If teeth aren't the worst of it, what was the worst of it?

Of course the prohibition is what leads to the loss of teeth. Methamphetamine impacts salivation much more commonly and to a greater extent than amphetamine does. But meth is the cheap and accessible option due to the law.

I consider it the governments job to keep the population in a state where they can have a net benefit to society. Obviously this needs to be balanced with personal freedoms.

They probably didn't ask all the wedding guests for their medical history.

Missing teeth may not be the worst, but in this case perhaps the most immediately recognizable.

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