So which is it, ladies and gentlemen? Are our distinguished state representatives and senators for local control or against local control? They do keep the rest of us guessing, don't they?
For example, only a few days ago, Arkansas' lawmakers were rushing through a bill to keep cities and counties from passing their own anti-discrimination ordinances. No, can't have that. Instead, our Legislature decided that it could, and would, tell the state's cities and counties whom they could treat as second-class citizens by denying them specific protection under the law. The aim of such local ordinances was to assure justice for all, but why trust local yokels to handle that kind of responsibility? As if they had a sense of right and wrong, and knew very well the kind of citizens--like homosexuals and racial minorities--who had been denied justice for so long.
No, rather than trust these rubes to do right after all these years, tell 'em they ought to leave such complicated moral and legal judgments to their betters at the General Assembly, those paragons of moral virtue. After all, hadn't the Legislature blessed institutions like Jim Crow in the bad old days, and backed up saints like Orval Faubus and J. William Fulbright when the segs made their final stand in the Little Rock Crisis of '57? The indelible stain of that sad affair still lingers on this state's good name. Now our legislators have set out to protect Arkansas from the conscience of localities that seek to do right on their own. No local control for you, cities and counties, not on this question.
But that was then. Another dawn, another shift. For not just geese and fools wake up to a new world every morning. Maybe legislators do, too. Or at least some of them.
Last week, the House voted to approve House Bill 1355--60 votes to 34!--to allow cities and other such local jurisdictions that supply water to their communities to decide whether to "adjust" fluoride levels in their folks' water. Even to adjust it down to zero. As if allowing tooth decay should be a matter of local option.
For the record, it shouldn't be. Get a copy of the Centers for Disease Control's top 10 achievements in public health over the last 100 years. One of them is fluoridation of tap water. To quote the CDC: "Although other fluoride-containing products are available, water fluoridation remains the most equitable and cost-effective method of delivering fluoride to all members of most communities, regardless of age, educational attainment, or income level." In short, adding fluoride to the public's water helps the least among us: the kind of kids from poor families who might not have access to dental cleanings every six months--or even toothpaste on a daily basis.
But . . . House Bill 1355 goes to the state Senate anyway.
Here's how its sponsor, Jack Ladyman, R-Jonesboro, excused his bill: "It only does one thing. It gives local cities, counties, water boards and rural water systems local control over fluoride levels in their drinking water. This bill is not about the science of fluoride treatment to prevent tooth decay . . . You may hear today about studies of the benefits of fluoride treatment in the water. I am not here to prove or disprove those studies."
No, the Hon. Jack Ladyman isn't here to debate all that science stuff. Maybe because the science would prove his bill wrong-headed, even wrong-hearted? But he's not here to debate all those studies. Because all those studies, time and again, have shown that adding fluoride to water saves not only dollars in the long run, but pain. Lots of pain. Talk to somebody who's had dental work lately. If it isn't done right, the pain can be excruciating. Why expose innocent children to that sure result if nothing is done to prevent all those dental caries that, for too long, like pellagra and hookworm, were once epidemic among the South's rural poor--till science did something about them. Now our legislators may be bent on ignoring rotten teeth, too. If this is progress, what would be regress?
But the aforementioned Jack Ladyman isn't here to talk about "science" and "studies" and all that pointy-headed stuff. So let's hear from somebody who is willing to talk science.
Take, for good example, state Representative Deborah Ferguson, a Democrat from West Memphis, who's also a . . . dentist.
"Water fluoridation is a public-health measure, not a local control issue to be politicized," she says, wisely. "This safe and effective public-health measure, like vaccines against other preventable childhood diseases, suffers from a perception of risk that I assure you does not exist."
For another point of view, listen to a Republican legislator who voted against this bill, Justin Boyd of Fort Smith, who says he was against it because every $1 spent on fluoride saves $38 in Medicaid dollars that would otherwise be spent on dental care for kids. So this issue is not only a "science" thing but an "economics" thing, specifically a state budget thing. And both argue against this bill, HB 1355, which is as uninformed as it is uncaring.
So what to do now that HB 1355 is headed for the state Senate?
Kill it there.
And if survives a vote there, then a conscientious, scientifically literate governor should veto it. Before it becomes (painful) law.
Editorial on 02/24/2015