City Council passed the first reading of an ordinance to mandate that city water be fluoridated. This vote came after an advisory election, which passed 57% to 43%. This first reading will (hopefully) be the first of three readings, and will allow Safety and Service Director Brian Shidaker to work with an engineer to get an estimate on costs for the implementation of a fluoride program.

For anyone that reads this blog with consistency, I have (and continue to be) supportive of adding fluoride into the public water supply. The voters showed up on election day and told council, by a 14% margin, that they want fluoride in the city’s water system. So how, after supporting the move to go to the voters, did two council members still vote against a FIRST reading on this ordinance?

One council member, Lonnie Stuckert, has embarrassed himself throughout this whole process. He continued to do so with his behavior and statements on Thursday night. The week before the election, he wrote a letter to the editor that would have been bad anyway, but was made worse by his position on city council. He showed that he is more willing to listen to conspiracists and bloggers rather than the CDC and other public health organizations. This was in stark contrast to the pro-fluoride letters from a variety of physicians, dentists, and public health professionals in Wilmington. He doubled down on many of those statements Thursday night, which included him insinuating that Council member Kelsey Swindler was unethical and that those of us that voted for the fluoride measure were misinformed.

One statement from Mr. Stuckert that stood out to me was when he said the Society for Toxicology had said that fluoride was as bad as lead. This was shocking to many in the audience, and I immediately took to Google. I couldn’t find anything that indicated they had an official position on this, other than that their website still has educational materials that were pro-fluoride. I believe, although I am not certain, that Mr. Stuckert found an article from the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, which is cited frequently in the anti-fluoride literature as stating that the Society for Toxicology has come out against fluoride. A long search of their website did not lead me to finding anything of the sort. I did, however, find that the Journal has advocated such positions as linking vaccines with autism, saying HIV does not cause AIDS, and linking abortion and breast cancer, among a much broader list of scientifically unfounded and discredited claims.

So what do with a council member who refuses to represent his ward, but instead himself? With someone who has become so contrarian as to get personal with his fellow members of council, and say that voters who disagreed with him (the majority) have basically been duped? Who, in part, must blame the local medical professionals who have supported fluoride as part of this conspiracy to mislead the voters? I believe the voters in the 2nd Ward will know what to do if, hopefully, he sees challengers in next year’s election. He has shown that he is not interested in representing the most vulnerable residents of his ward–children who have difficulty accessing medical care, but instead wants to represent the bloggers and questionable science. We cannot afford to have someone who neglects to represent their ward like Mr. Stuckert.