Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Thursday signed legislation that will ban local water districts from adding fluoride to public drinking water, making his the second state this year to prohibit a public health practice that had been hailed as one of the 10 greatest achievements of the 20th Century.
Speaking at an event in Dade City, DeSantis said the bill — which removes fluoride from the legal definition of acceptable water quality additives that public water districts may add to supplies — would allow people to make their own decisions.
“We certainly now in our society in 2025, we have the ability to deliver fluoride through toothpaste and all these other things. You don’t gotta force it and take away people’s choices. But the whole crux of the issue is you should be able to make decisions on the basis of informed consent,” DeSantis said. “Forcing it in the water supply is basically forced medication on people. They don’t have a choice, you’re taking that away from them.”
Florida now joins Utah, where Gov. Spencer Cox (R) signed a similar bill earlier this year. Lawmakers in at least 10 other states have introduced bills to ban fluoride in water or repeal existing laws that mandate the use of fluoride in water supplies.
Read more: Conservatives target fluoride in water systems
The rush of legislation comes after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promoting suspect studies on fluoridation on social media and in remarks. President Trump has suggested he may push to remove fluoride from drinking water on a national scale.
The Fluoride Action Network, which opposes adding fluoride to water supplies, has promoted those studies that purport to show fluoride can cause harms to young children and pregnant women.
Scientific consensus overwhelmingly rejects those studies. Groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Dental Association and the American Public Health Association say the studies show harms come from a massive amount of fluoride, not the typical dose included in drinking water, which amounts to about three drops per 55-gallon barrel.
Studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show fluoridation reduces cavities by about 25%, and that fluoridation returns an estimated $20 in health care savings for every dollar spent on treatment.
Fourteen states have some form of fluoride mandate on the books requiring public water systems with more than a certain number of customers to add fluoride. Arkansas adopted the most recent mandate, in 2011.
The bill DeSantis signed Thursday, an omnibus farm package, also targets the sale of plant-based products meant to imitate meat, a favorite target of the Republican governor’s. The bill gives the state agriculture department the authority to issue rules to prohibit the sale of plant-based products that are labeled as meat, such as Beyond Burgers and Impossible products.
Read more: Rural Republicans seek labels on lab-grown meat
That provision, DeSantis said, is meant to preserve the cattle industry in Florida — and beyond — from what he characterized as a global conspiracy to replace foods in the name of combatting climate change.
“I’m not playing the games of the World Economic Forum. I want to make sure we preserve the cattle industry, not only in the state of Florida but throughout the entire United States of America,” DeSantis said. “They view agriculture as the problem for global warming. They view cattle as the problem for global warming.”
DeSantis signed legislation targeting lab-grown meat products last year. Similar bills have been introduced this year in at least six other states. Those bills largely ban products from implying they are made from meat or eggs.