The Louisiana state Senate April 8 approved a bill to allow voters in the grips of a conservative conspiracy theory fever dream to halt water fluoridization in their local water districts, despite clear evidence that these programs are perfectly safe and do not, as opponents have often claimed, make people dumb, docile or gay.
Sponsored by Houma Republican Sen. Michael “Big Mike” Fesi, SB 4 originally would have outright barred water fluoridization across the state. Fesi has a longstanding obsession with fake conspiracies, many of which are rooted in antisemitism, including bizarre theories about “chemtrails” and “weather control machines,” neither of which are real.
That was apparently too far down the conspiracy theory hole for some of his fellow senators. Sen. Gerald Boudreaux, a Lafayette Democrat, convinced Fesi to tone down the bill in the Health and Welfare Committee last month.
As a result, Fesi agreed to limit the ban and apply it to new fluoridization programs while creating a mechanism for ending fluoridization on a water district, by water district basis.
But he did manage to repeat some bizarre claims, like claiming that water fluoridation is poisoning people — despite the fact that fluoride is added to drinking water in small amounts and has been proven safe for almost a century. He also claimed that standard warning labels on toothpaste — advising users not to eat their toothpaste — was proof that fluoride is toxic.
For the better part of the last 100 years, communities have safely introduced fluoride into drinking water supplies to help prevent tooth decay.
Anti-fluoride claims are rooted in the antisemitic and anti-communist movements of the 1940s and 1950s and was championed by the likes of the John Birch Society and even the Ku Klux Klan.
In Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satirical film “Doctor Strangelove,” a deranged American Air Force general begins World War III over his belief that fluoridization is a communist plot targeting Americans’ “precious bodily fluids.”
The bill sailed through the senate handily, with little debate on the senate floor, and passed 26-7.
The bill still needs to pass the House of Representatives in order to become law. Last year, an identical bill to the original was killed by representatives after a committee meeting during which dentists, pediatricians, children’s advocates and other non-conspiracy minded people vocally opposed the measure.
Original article online at: https://www.nola.com/gambit/news/politics_elections/la-senate-goes-full-dr-strangelove-oks-anti-fluoride-bill/article_cd2af4d7-9efc-4a50-92fe-62ed6e7e0011.html