Louisiana’s Republican dominated legislature may ban water fluoridation, because of course

The Louisiana Legislature could make good on one of Dr. Strangelove’s most famous examples of the paranoid conspiracy theories bred by conservative Red Scare and Cold War propaganda if a trio of state senators have their way this year.

Sens. Mike Fesi, Heather Cloud and Patrick McMath have introduced Senate Bill 2, which would ban the fluoridation of drinking water supplies in Louisiana.

Communities have been adding fluoride to drinking water in the United States for 80 years and there is no scientific or medical basis for banning drinking water fluoridation. There is, however, ample evidence of its benefits, specifically in terms of dental health, so long as it is at appropriate levels.

Some communities’ water supply has enough fluoride in it naturally to not require additions, while other areas dilute or remove the levels of naturally occurring fluoride in their water. That’s not because fluoride is inherently dangerous. Rather it is because, like literally everything other than boiled crawfish, too much of a good thing can hurt you.

None of that, of course, has stopped flat-Earthers, chemtrail enthusiasts and anti-vaxxers from deciding fluoridation is part of a conspiracy by Communists, the one-world government or other wholly fictional groups to do any number of nefarious things to an unsuspecting public.

In the 1964 Cold War commentary film “Dr. Strangelove,” Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper launches a preemptive nuclear attack against the Soviet Union (that’s Russia to you youths) because of water fluoridation, which he believes is a Communist plot to pollute American’s “precious bodily fluids.”

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At the time, Ripper’s bizarre obsession with fluoride and protecting his bodily fluids was used as an over-the-top gag to demonstrate how badly he’d lost the plot. Today, it’s becoming orthodoxy within the GOP. Republicans in Texas and Florida have already successfully pushed through legislation to end the practice, and there are similar efforts in states around the country.

McMath told WDSU that he believes that fluoride — which, again, is a naturally occurring mineral in drinking water — is a “medicine” and that the bill is about “consent” and peoples’ individual health needs and outcomes.

McMath has previously voted on a number of measures involving Louisianans’ personal health needs and outcomes, including last year when he voted to support a bill making it harder for women to obtain misoprostol and mifepristone, two life-saving medications.

Meanwhile, Fesi has also introduced SB 19, which would allow pharmacists to sell ivermectin to anyone over the age of 18.

Despite being primarily used to treat horses and other animals in the United States — as well as certain worm infestations and topical conditions in humans — ivermectin became popular with conservatives after the start of the Covid pandemic thanks to anti-vax propagandists and the Trump administration.

There is no evidence that ivermectin has any effect on Covid or the myriad other illnesses it has since been touted as a miracle cure for since 2020.

The bill would also make pharmacists who act in “good faith” and with “reasonable care” immune from civil liability, making it impossible for families to sue them if, say, a family member dies as a result of taking the drug.

McMath also has introduced SB 14, which would have a significant impact on school breakfast and lunch programs as well as restaurants in the state. Specifically, it would bar schools from serving food with a variety of common preservatives, dyes and other additives, including carrageenan, a harmless additive made from red seaweed and often used as a thickener.

Self-declared online “nutrition influencers” on TikTok and other platforms have recently railed against the use of carrageenan in products like Costco’s popular rotisserie chickens. It appears they are confusing food-grade carrageenan with degraded carrageenan, which is a specifically processed form of the compound used in clinical settings and not fit for human consumption.

The bill would also require all restaurants in the state list on menus or some other easily visible area whether they use one or more of nine seed-based oils, including corn, canola and sunflower oils.

And Rep. Kathy Edmonston’s House Bill 112 would bar any “healthcare professional licensing board or commission” from prohibiting or otherwise restricting “the prescribing, administering, or dispensing” of drugs approved for human use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for off-label purposes.