Republican state legislators across the country are filing a flurry of bills to advance the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda promoted by activist lawyer and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s in line to be the next U.S. health secretary.
Under the MAHA banner, state lawmakers are working to regulate candy and soda purchases under social welfare programs, remove fluoride from public water systems, roll back state vaccination requirements, and remove ultra-processed food from schools.
They’ve enlisted celebrities to help. They’re using #RFK and #MAHA hashtags on social media to share legislative wins. Lawmakers even walked the red carpetat a January gala celebrated as the official start of the MAHA movement in the Trump era.
“It’s pretty exciting for me,” said Wyoming Republican state Rep. Jacob Wasserburger, who has sponsored a MAHA bill in his state.
“I was a pretty overweight kid when I was growing up. … When I was about 16, I started trying to get healthy, and it seemed to me like there were some badly flawed issues with our health care in this country that weren’t being addressed,” he said.
Kennedy is a vocal vaccine skeptic with controversial and sometimes misleading views on a number of public health policies, from fluoride in public water to the underlying causes of HIV and autism. He’s decried ultra-processed foods, government overreach and greedy corporations for harming human health and the environment.
His often unorthodox — and in some cases, false — views have inspired some conservative lawmakers and given political cover to others, spurring them to reshape public health policy in myriad ways.
Fluoride and drinking water
Kennedy has called fluoride “an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.”
And now Republican state legislators are taking aim at fluoride.
Legislators in several states have introduced bills that would prohibit adding fluoride to public water systems, including Arkansas, Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Tennessee and Utah. Other states, such as Kentucky and Nebraska, are considering bills to make fluoridation programs optional.
Most major medical organizations including the American Medical Association and American Dental Association, as well as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, support public water fluoride programs, and say fluoride at recommended levels is safe and an effective way to prevent cavities. However, some studies of pregnant women and their children suggest that fluoride might harm developing brains at levels of 1.5 milligrams or more per liter. Nearly 3 million Americans live in areas where the fluoride level in tap water is at or above that level, according to one 2023 study.
And the National Toxicology Program, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, earlier this year concluded with “moderate confidence” that higher levels of fluoride in drinking water — above 1.5 milligrams per liter — are associated with lower IQ in kids.
Original article online at: https://stateline.org/2025/02/12/state-lawmakers-embrace-rfk-jr-s-health-policies/