Editorial: The dying days of an addict

Thursday, May 18, 2006 | 7:32 a.m.

Law enforcement officers and social service workers recently approached the Clark County Commission and requested more funds to increase the availability of treatment for people addicted to methamphetamine.

We agree more funds should be available, as meth use and addiction is a rapidly growing problem in Southern Nevada. People requesting help from local treatment centers are often being turned away for lack of public funding. Federal funding that police agencies once used in battling meth has been cut in recent years. And funding from the state and local governments falls well short of the need.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., acknowledged the need for more government funding last month while appearing around the state during a congressional recess. "This scourge of meth is awful," he told a crowd in Pahrump. "It's cheap, it's dirty and it's very powerful," the local paper reported him saying. "We have to do a better job."

Given the huge federal deficit that has built up during the presidency of George W. Bush, and the pressure that state and local governments are under to keep spending in check, it is not likely that the immediate future will bring any significant increase in public spending on the meth crisis.

There is, however, an inexpensive option for graphically impressing upon young people the likely consequence of experimenting with meth. The drug, whose ingredients include such toxins as drain cleaner and fertilizer, is highly addictive. Like cigarettes, it destroys the body from the inside out. Unlike cigarettes, though, it acts much more quickly, turning even young people into bedridden invalids.

A 34-year-old Missouri man, who is dying in agony from his meth addiction, recently gave permission to a videographer to film his final days. The skeletal man, Shawn Bridges, is hooked up to a feeding tube and catheter. His heart is swollen grotesquely, and his other vital organs are mortally damaged as well. The videographer, Chip Rossetti, is also the narrator. He says on the film, "Long ago he chose to give in to temptation. Long ago he chose a life of drugs. But he wasn't always that way."

Bridges allowed himself to be filmed for the documentary "No More Sunsets" because he wanted to make a positive contribution to society before he died. He hopes it will save others from making the choices he did in life. The 29-minute film is available for $20 from Rossetti's Web site, www.rossettiproductions.com.

The documentary may not be for everybody, but for those with loved ones who won't listen even to their family, and appear headed for such a tragedy as Bridges is experiencing, it might just be a way to finally get their attention.