Gov. DeSantis commits to sign bans on water fluoridation, ‘chemtrails’

Gov. Ron DeSantis is making Florida’s position against water additives and weather modification official, signing some crowd-pleasing measures.

In Miami, DeSantis committed to sign a bill banning fluoride and other substances from being added to city water supplies (SB 700) and another limiting cloud seeding and “chemtrails” (SB 56).

The former bill is a classic preemption. The provisions on water additives are part of larger legislation championed by Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson.

“It’s forced medication when they’re jamming fluoride in your water supply,” DeSantis contended, saying people can add fluoride on their own without local governments “unilaterally injecting the chemical into your water supply.”

On Tuesday, Miami-Dade County overrode a mayoral veto of a bill banning fluoride, DeSantis noted. Other counties won’t have to do that.

Others extolled the bill.

“Drinking water will hydrate, not medicate,” promised Simpson, a Republican from Trilby.

Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo issued guidance against water fluoridation months ago, calling it an “insane” practice.

Speaking Tuesday, he likened his colleagues in the medical profession who back the practice to Charles Schulz’s “Linus,” who was racked by insecurities.

“I think of Charlie Brown, and I love that, I don’t know, I can’t remember his name, but the little guy who holds his blanket, right? And I love it, you know? Hold your blanket. But unfortunately, you know, he is a kid. But what we have instead, we have professionals — and they’re doctors, dentists, public health leaders — who are holding on to fluoridation like that blanket,” the state’s top doctor said.

Among other things, the bill also bans plant-based meat and milk substitutes being advertised with those words if most other southern states adopt the same language.

The other legislation, sponsored by Sen. Ileana Garcia, will make unauthorized cloud seeding and other such activities a third-degree felony, with each instance punishable by up to five years in prison and a significantly hiked monetary fine of up to $100,000.

“People have concerns,” DeSantis said, “because people say the way you fight climate change is to inject this stuff and block the sun.”

DeSantis, who said the chemtrail concern was “caricatured as kind of kooky,” said Florida does not do that, and the bill “slams the door on that.”

Ladapo, denouncing additives like “aluminum oxide” in “the air that we breathe,” said he doesn’t “know if it’s going to be enough to stop these activities because of the experience in Tennessee when they’ve done something similar. Although our legislation is more far-reaching,” he said.