“The report is deeply concerning to us,” Windsor and Essex County’s top public health official, Dr. Wajid Ahmed, said last year.

“This should be alarming to our community,” the medical officer of health said again, six months later.

“We need to accept as a community that we have a problem…,” he said before addressing city council.

At least 15 people in Windsor and Essex County are believed to have died from drug overdoses when Ahmed made those comments.

But he wasn’t talking about the opioid crisis. He was talking about tooth decay.

The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit launched an aggressive drive to fluoridate Windsor’s water, convincing city council to reverse its decision five years ago to stop fluoridation.

It was important.

But unlike the opioid crisis, no one had died…

*Read more on the opioid crisis online at https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/jarvis-no-time-to-wait-for-safe-injection-site