States Are Banning Fluoride. Now What?

In a nationwide first, Utah has banned fluoride in public drinking water. They won’t be the last. It’s yet another thing we saw coming.

Months ago, some of us quietly predicted the anti-science cults would start reaching beyond smartphones and social media for something to blame for the widescale cognitive decline of children in the U.S. And of course, children’s development and mental health have stood at the forefront of this tempest. Instead of doing anything about the real problem, or even acknowledging it, they’re doing what social psychology has observed for generations now.

They’re doubling down.

Lawmakers even said the quiet part out loud, declaring it was “too expensive,” despite the health benefits. For the record, it costs roughly 64 cents per person per year, and it saves $38 in dental costs. That’s a good ROI.

It’s dreadful, but it’s not shocking. Rather than ban guns or misinformation, these politicians are aiming at the lowest of hanging fruits—the easiest nonsolution, one that will cost nothing in the short run and everything in the long one. We’re talking about the same cults that poured Vitamin A overdoses on a measles epidemic, a movement that still encourages parents to avoid vaccines even as children die from preventable diseases. It would be bad enough if these conspiracy theorists were acting alone, but they get a big boost from the likes of Leana Wen, who thought it would be a good idea last year to sane-wash fluoride skepticism—again without even acknowledging the other, extremely obvious factors at work. The sane-washers have also been busy explaining to everyone that the U.S. is weird for adding fluoride to our drinking water, saying other developed countries don’t.

As we’ll get into, that’s not even half the story.

This raises two important questions. First, why don’t other developed countries add fluoride to their drinking water?

Second, if your state decides to ban fluoride…

What can you do?