Now Chew on This

If you’ve ever wondered why some parts of the nation see Californians as a far-out breed, here’s an explanation you might have overlooked. Maybe it’s the fluoride thing.

For several decades it’s been widely known that a minuscule amount of fluoride in drinking water means better teeth and fewer cavities. Or, to paraphrase a popular beer commercial of a few years back, “No Taste. Less Drilling.”

Indianapolis started things off among major American cities by introducing fluoride into the municipal drinking water in 1951, and lots of other areas that were hardly known for their forward thinking on social fronts quickly followed suit. Even the Big Apple had signed on by 1965, but not Los Angeles, Orange County or for that matter much of the rest of California.

Here, fluoridation had somehow become the Red menace incarnate, a Communist plot to soften minds, not strengthen teeth. As the years rolled on, the anti-fluoride arguments caused more wincing than a root canal. No doubt the claims of the no-fluoride crowd led many to conclude that some other substance had already gotten loose in the water supply.

Put fluoride in the water and it would lead to: neuroses, polio, memory loss, birth defects, mottled teeth, cancer, heart trouble, skin disease, enzyme deficiencies, you name it. Even after Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley voters in Orange County agreed in 1971 to fluoridate their water, Los Angeles balked.

“Forced medication,” declared then-City Councilman Art Snyder. Poor diet was the real cause of bad teeth among inner-city children, argued colleague Gilbert W. Lindsay. And this from Councilman Robert J. Stevenson in 1974: “What bothers me is the Third Reich Thinking: You will take medicine!”

The American Civil Liberties Union essentially declared that there was a Fluoride Gap within Los Angeles: There was more of the naturally occurring stuff in the San Fernando Valley’s aqueduct water than in the water of other parts of the city.

In the meantime, Southern Californians made it fashionable to carry designer spring water everywhere, as if we lived in the Kalahari Desert, far from the next oasis. Go figure.

Well, now Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter has announced that the city, finally, will get its fluoridated water, three years after officials agreed and now that related engineering projects are complete. Small wonder that cosmetic dentistry is so big in California.