When asked about an effort to ban fluoride in drinking water, Utah Governor Spencer Cox said, "It’s not a bill I care that much about” but he still signed it, despite the health benefits being well-established and claims of harm being the kind of slimy epidemiology that claims "risk" of BPA, weedkillers, PFAS, and too many products to count.
Utah wants to be the California of the right-wing; ban things because it matches the politics of their voters and science will be marginalized.(1)
They have a long way to go. Anyone visiting California for the first time is alarmed by 'cancer causing' stickers on 80,000 products for a day, and then they make fun of it along with everyone in California except the lawyers and epidemiologists who profit from it. There were no more cancers in California before the referendum was passed over the objections of scientists. There are no fewer cancer cases now thanks to meaningless stickers. It is just higher cost.
That is what Utah will face a generation from now, though admittedly only in dental care, not in truly high-cost areas that harm the poor, like special formulations for gasoline, special catalytic converters for cars, electricity rates that have gone up 100% in the last few years in California thanks to mandates and subsidies for solar panels, and even high costs for water because the politicians in charge refuse to build more water storage.
The logic is suspect. Only half of the state has municipal fluoridated water, Cox notes, and then says they don't seem to have twice as many cavities, but that's a little like claiming no one needs an HPV vaccine because cervical cancer rates are in decline. The only people who believe in poor methodology epidemiology like that are trial lawyers preparing the public for a jury trial in advance.(2)
It's not the dumbest paper California anti-science activists and politicians promote. That would be the paper claiming that organic strawberries were more "nutritious" because a survey found that people eating organic strawberries like the 'mouth feel' more, written by an economist who position at a university was entirely funded by an organic industry trade group. This is done because it does the opposite of the usual homeopathy activists engage in. It uses really, really high levels of fluoridated water and then claims it would be the same at levels the US allows.
California invokes 'if it can save even one child' a product should be banned, so needing to see hundreds is more evidence Utah has a long way to go if they want to be the California of anti-science Republicans. This is actually not new. Fluoridation has been under attack since it became common to add in water and 150 towns have removed it.
(1) Facebook groups in the state are stuffed with people concerned because the state banned Bonide Annual Tree And Shrub Insect Control and other products that actually work against aphids, while believing environmental claims that 'green' alternatives will work. It is also Bradford Pear removal season, which was also made popular by government who listened to environmentalists over scientists.
Graphic courtesy of Brad Maushart, who is not a California meteorologist or he wouldn't make fun of this stuff. Or PM2.5 scare claims. Or any of the other nonsense you have to say to stay employed in California media.
(2) A lawyer like former Natural Resources Defense Council legend Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who opposes cell phones, Wi-Fi, any pesticide that isn't labeled organic, pasteurized milk, and properly disposing animal carcasses he takes selfies with and then puts in his trunk. President-Elect Obama withdrew Kennedy from running EPA because he was so wacky, and Obama was a guy who wondered if vaccines caused autism and surrounded himself with UFO believers, conspiracy theorists, and a guy who thought girls can't do math. Republicans hate being outdone, so they put him in charge of the NIH.