Dental costs for county inmates: $44,756 in 2003; $58,193 in 2004.

The county does try to charge inmates a co-payment for the teeth dentists yank, the abscesses treated and cavities filled. So, inmates do pay for a portion of their dental care. Inmates contributed nearly $9,000 in 2003 and nearly $12,000 in 2004.

Still, Davis said, "It's a pretty dramatic increase."

Meth mouth also creates a strange phenomenon that will result in a young generation of denture wearers.

Maybe more importantly, child advocates say, the pattern of neglect that contributes to "meth mouth" is being passed on to another generation of youngsters.

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Colby Anderson, 29.

He had been smoking meth on and off for the past 10 or 12 years when police busted him recently where he was living in a Woods Cross motel.

Today, he is in jail for meth possession — and the county is paying the tab for his dental care.

He's been watching his teeth disintegrate.

"You slowly see your teeth just get eaten away."

He once had an abscess the size of a softball. He vowed to quit meth then but couldn't kick the super-addictive drug.

"You go right back to it," Anderson said. "The pain goes away and you go right back to it."

Once he lost a tooth while eating a Wendy's sandwich.

Meth ate away the glue that held his braces on as a teenager.

He is now missing 10 or 15 teeth.

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Dr. Robert Anderson sees about a dozen inmates at the Davis County Jail each week. "Sometimes every one of them is a meth user," he said. He also sees them in his private practice.

His jail workload has recently increased from five hours per session to eight hours at the jail — all because of the number of meth users. Anderson figures meth mouth costs the county as much as $3,000 a year that could have been directed to other services.

"It's going to become an issue here more than it already is," he said. "The problem is growing."

Meth addiction has reached epidemic proportions in Utah. Rampant tooth decay is one of its ugly but little-discussed side effects.

Jerry Cook, Weber County Jail chief deputy, asks facetiously: "Do we have some who don't have rotted teeth?"

Dentists in private practice also see meth mouth.

Jack Ford, spokesman for the Utah Department of Corrections, is reluctant to tie "meth mouth" to any financial burdens. "The medical area is real sensitive," he said. "But it is an ongoing problem."