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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is facing backlash after suggesting taxpayers should fund dental care for meth users, arguing many cannot rebuild their lives without teeth.
Bass, who is vying in a crowded June primary for a second mayoral term, made the remark during a candidate forum last week on the city’s homelessness crisis.
“How many people that you meet that are unhoused don’t have teeth at all?” Bass said during an exchange. “They don’t have teeth. Why? Because meth rots your teeth.”
“You can’t succeed without teeth. So there needs to be comprehensive healthcare provided to people,” she continued.
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Bass’s comments sparked an uproar among conservatives, who torched the incumbent’s response for appearing to omit any mention of tackling the root causes of the city’s homelessness and drug problems.
“A homeless drug addict just tried to stab me,” conservative journalist Dustin Grage wrote on the social media platform X, impersonating a Los Angeles resident affected by the city’s homeless crisis and drug epidemic. “Karen Bass: ‘It’s okay, we’re going to provide them free teeth so they can be successful now.’”
Despite Bass’s claims of progress, Los Angeles continues to rank among the cities with the nation’s largest homeless population, with critics arguing the crisis has continued to fester under her watch.
More than 43,000 individuals in Los Angeles experienced homelessness in early February 2025, according to a count released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
Former Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Katie Zacharia also criticized Bass for not addressing the underlying drug epidemic in her remarks.
“Symptoms, never the disease,” Zacharia wrote.
“Clueless Karen Bass said that the worst part about meth addiction is that it ruins your teeth,” former Trump assistant attorney general Theo Wold wrote on X. “To paraphrase Norm MacDonald: Last time I checked, I thought the worst part about meth addiction was meth!”
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A spokesperson for Bass did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bass, 72, an establishment Democrat who represented a Los Angeles-based seat in Congress from 2011 to 2022, is facing a competitive re-election challenge from her left and right flank.
Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman, 44, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is touting her progressive bona fides. Meanwhile, former reality television star Spencer Pratt, 42, is emerging as a dark horse candidate after gaining momentum by hammering Bass’s response to the devastating 2025 Los Angeles fires that obliterated his home and many others.
The upstart candidate has also ripped Bass’s failure to turn the corner on the city’s homelessness and public safety problems.
Pratt is a registered Republican, though the city’s mayoral contest is officially nonpartisan.
The June 2 primary is widely expected to go into a runoff election in which the top two vote-getters would appear on the ballot in November.
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