Fluoride Wars in Massachusetts: Decision Time for the Newburyport Board of Health after Months of Debate
Was it a Victory or Defeat for the Burgeoning Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Make American Health Again Movement in the Worldwide Heart of the Medical Establishment?
This is a follow-up in a series regarding the issue of fluoride, which has become one of the early front and center issues for the new wave health rights movement. Click here for previous information in this space:
January 31, 2025 Podcast: Kennedy, MAHA, and the Fluoride Debate in Newburyport and Across Massachusetts https://reclaimparty.substack.com/p/reclaim-podcast-kennedy-maha-and
January 22, 2025 Article: A Local Fluoride and Board of Health Tale: MAHA Energy in Action in Newburyport, Massachusetts https://reclaimparty.substack.com/p/a-local-fluoride-and-board-of-health
After months of debate, the moment of truth finally arrived at the Newburyport, MA Board of Health (BOH) meeting on March 20. The meeting began with several procedural questions and concerns, as was the case at the previous BOH meeting. The Chairman seemed lost (my description is gentle on this), best exemplified when both government officials in the room and other Board members tried in vain explaining several times that it was legally not the role of nor permitted for the BOH to even talk about, led alone recommend, a citizen led referendum effort to place the issue before the voters on the ballot, to which the Chairman proceeded to state multiple times that he felt strongly that indeed there should be a citizen led referendum effort (in any case, it was brought up during the meeting although not clarified, but the general understanding is that if there were to be a town-wide citizen vote on the issue, it would be nonbinding based on state law and would simply be treated as further data to be used for any actual decision-making.)
The Chairman made other procedural snafus at the top, such as lecturing the audience that he knew for sure that everyone in the audience was anti-fluoride and that he didn’t want to hear any more of it, to which an audience member rightly informed him to stop making such leading statements and assumptions, as this was the first time he was attending a BOH fluoride meeting and, thus, the Chairman could not know what his feelings on the subject were. A collective resigned sigh and feeling of it is what it is sentiment blanketed the room.
In the end, it was seemingly understood by most everyone in the room other than the Chairman that the BOH was there to have a debate and take a vote to recommend what to do with fluoride in the public water supply. However, this technically did not happen, due to further procedural confusion and problems, as the Board did not take a formal final vote, rather a single motion simply failed to pass.
The issue of fluoride had been on the BOH’s agenda since Fall and previously it was understood that a recommendation from the BOH was going to take place at their January 2025 meeting. However, as described in a previous article on the subject, the BOH was strongly pressured by the Mayor of Newburyport in a way that have never been done before (these were the clear words coming from the BOH Chairman) to delay the vote in order to allow for a Mayor led Public Forum on the subject. This Mayoral Public Forum occurred on March 6. A somewhat respectable number of people attended, but it was far from a packed house. However, very notably, after the Mayor’s office made a huge deal at the previous BOH meeting about the need to broadcast widely and have a big Public Forum, the Mayor himself did not even bother to show up. There was simply a five-minute presentation at the start by the Mayor’s chief of staff regarding the basic history of fluoride use in the community, followed by public comment, which lasted around 40 minutes.
There was a roughly equal split between pro and con. I counted 8 pro fluoride commentators, with 9 arguing to take out fluoride, while one additional speaker was neutral, simply arguing for the idea of a town-wide vote to settle the issue.
It is important to note the majority of the pro fluoride speakers were associated with dental offices and heavily relied on standard buzzwords and phrases such as “trust the science/experts,” the “science is settled,” and “misinformation.” Regarding actual concerns, the pro fluoride crowd leaned on the arguments surrounding preventing cavities and protecting lower income people.
Those who argued against fluoride attacked the issue from a variety of angles including, but not limited to:
toxicity and sourcing concerns;
heavy metals;
whole body health;
freedom of choice/health rights;
mass drugging of the population;
accumulation of fluoride in the body over time;
mothers being especially concerned about bodily impacts to their babies and young children;
the growing concerns in the scientific community about impacts to IQ levels and other negative impacts, which are increasingly being exposed by court cases/decisions, as well as new scientific studies;
the concept of protecting the vulnerable population who are extra sensitive to fluoride and are experiencing all sorts of random health problems;
the fact that the United States is in the clear minority, with the vast majority of European countries not putting fluoride in their water;
the idea that fluoride is everywhere and that people can easily get fluoride on their own;
other parts of the country now racing to take fluoride out of their public water supplies;
not being able to control the dosage of fluoride a person ultimately ingests when it is in the public water supply;
missing the forest for the trees by overly focusing on impacts to teeth but ignoring impacts to the whole body, including the brain from both an IQ perspective but also broader health toxicity level, etc.
In summary, the bottom-line argument collectively conveyed to take fluoride out was that the level of risk is too great and that communities should error on the side of caution when talking about forcing a substance on a population—especially with the amount of information we now have regarding concerns over fluoride—combined with a general argument centered on freedom of choice and health rights.
Link to March 6th, 2025, fluoride community forum in Newburyport. MA:
Back to the March 20 BOH meeting: The Chairman finally stated it was time for the Board members to debate the issue, to which the Chairman, before having any sort of discussion, simply came out right off the top and said he was a clear no on the idea of taking out fluoride, without providing any sort of explanation or reasoning to the public.
The position of the Chairman was far from a surprise to the audience and it was general understood going in to the meeting it was going to come down to the other two Board members.
To the great chagrin of most in the room, a second BOH member immediately followed the Chairman’s flat statement by stating he himself was against the idea of taking fluoride out of the public water supply as well, also without offering any reasoning.
And just like that, in a matter of a few seconds, with zero debate and discussion amongst Board members, it was over. After months of meetings and public forums initiated by passionate citizens, with fluoride rising to prominence on the national stage, two Board of Health members ended it all and clearly felt they owed the community zero reasoning or even the basic courtesy to acknowledge the passionate debate taking place and the time and effort put in by citizens.
That old familiar feeling of sorrow and resignation quickly swept over the audience—something that all people who dare speak out against the machine of the mainstream know all too well that no matter what the evidence is…no matter what is presented…and no matter what is done, there are simply too many people in positions of authority that simply refuse to even acknowledge, let alone seriously consider any new information or points of view.
To the second BOH member, I couldn’t help myself and asked from the audience, “That’s it? Don’t you think you owe the public some sort of reasoning?” to which he shot back in a clearly annoyed tone that he didn’t have to say anything or offer any explanation, but in essence, the science wasn’t there for him and he needed more science and data.
Then, out of what seemed like nowhere in the midst of the darkness that had descended upon the room, a light unexpectedly began to shine. It was the third BOH member’s time to speak and unlike the other two, she had well thought out the issue and came prepared to discuss, debate, and actually justify her position, showing great respect to people on both sides of the argument and respect to the broader concept of public participation.
Indeed, she came very prepared, fully explaining the debate she had been having with herself, the struggles, as she could see both sides. What appeared, though, to sway her was ultimately concluding, as she explained, that the evidence showed to her that this substance was a “drug” and, thus, the city was forcing a drug on everyone and that was problematic to her. In addition, she was moved at the public forum by the convincing argument that not all bodies are the same and that some people no doubt were going to be more susceptible and sensitive to the potential harm from fluoride (she mentioned the concept of the ends of a bell curve to help the audience visualize her thought process), and, thus, the argument of protecting the vulnerable really swayed her in the end, particularly from the mother of young children at the public forum who expressed her concern over fluoride’s outsized impact on small bodies.
Next, a great point this BOH person made was she flipped the concept of protecting lower income people on its head. It is almost always mentioned in pro-fluoride circles that fluoride in water is needed to support low-income people but that just characterizes lower income people as one dimensional and simply assumes that all lower income people are in favor of fluoride. Thus, the great flip she made in the argument is the added burden and cost to a lower income person who doesn’t want fluoride and now needs to spend extra money on bottled water. This was a brilliant and great new perspective I had not really considered before. In the end, she stressed that people should have the option to choose, especially parents with young children.
Other points she made that stood out:
no chemical is 100% safe;
most countries in Europe don’t do it;
researching data sources from places that are obviously sympathetic to the medical establishment like the World Health Organization (WHO) where even the WHO has shown that even in the case of supposed cavity prevention, there isn’t really much hard evidence of a clear benefit specifically attributed to fluoride in water to preventing cavities.
She wrapped up her sweeping tour de force by stating her recommendation was going to be to take fluoride out of Newburyport’s water supply. She made a motion to have the Board of Health recommend to take fluoride out of Newburyport’s public water supply. This motion did not receive a second. Everyone at this point just kind of looked at each other, with the fluoride agenda item ending and the Chairman looking to move on to the next item, without a formal fluoride vote properly being taken either way.
I believe communities like Newburyport will be shown to have been on the clear wrong side of history. There will be a time (perhaps quite soon, as the concept of statewide bans are rapidly gaining favor across the country) when it will become commonly accepted that putting fluoride in water in communities across the country was a mistake, driven heavily by special interests.
Communities such as Newburyport will increasingly expose themselves to potential litigation, as the evidence continues to come out about the various potential problems with fluoride and as the tide continues to shift in favor of removing.
What the MAHA movement, led by groundbreaking shifts in policy coming from our new HHS Secretary RFK Jr. will increasingly expose is the horrendous general policy we have had for decades of considering new chemicals and substances introduced into our nation’s food supply and other places as innocent until proven guilty, with an incredibly massive and overwhelming amount of effort and evidence of harm to the health of humans and the planet needed to remove any single substance once introduced because of the overwhelming lobbying power of corporate America and the cowardice of too many public officials. This mindset critically is now being flipped on its head by MAHA to force the system to first prove a substance is actually safe before introducing it into our everyday lives:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/11/health/gras-reform-kennedy-wellness/index.html
“US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has begun the process of eliminating a US Food and Drug Administration program called GRAS, or “generally recognized as safe,” that critics say has been abused by the food industry for decades.
Nearly 99% of new chemicals used in food or food packaging since 2000 were green-lit for use not by the FDA but by the food and chemical industry….”
In the meantime, we need more brave people to step forward and speak out. In the case of fluoride in public water supplies, we need more Department of Public Works and Water Treatment workers who understand firsthand the dangers of fluoride—they are the ones who see the toxic material warnings on the bags of fluoride and who need to wear protective gear around it—and the problem with trying to actually regulate the specific amount of it at any given time in the water system—not always dissolving properly etc. DPW workers with a conscience need to approach community leaders and say they refuse to take part in putting this stuff in the water any longer.
In the end, were the events in Newburyport a victory or defeat for anti-fluoride forces? On a surface level, it would appear to be a defeat but I do not see it that way at all. I view this chapter as an important triumph, one of many more to come in a long, ongoing battle. In fact, I see what happened as a mighty victory, given it took place in the land of the heart of the medical-industrial complex. Massachusetts, by some indicators, is the center of the entire global pharmaceutical and medical establishment, which wields enormous power. For example, Boston has been rated as being the largest Biotech Hub in the world: https://www.epmscientific.com/blog/2023/02/boston-is-now-the-largest-biotech-hub
Standing up to and speaking out against the medical establishment is exceedingly hard anywhere in the world, but it is especially difficult in Massachusetts. Still, even here in Massachusetts, real cracks are now starting to form in the establishment wall.
The Newburyport BOH member who spoke out in favor of removing fluoride deserves immense credit, as by all indications—based on her career resume of degrees and experience that involves the biggest institutions in the Massachusetts medical establishment—she is surrounded by this world. It is, of course, brave for anyone, no matter what segment of society they come from, to speak out against entrenched, establishment thinking and powerful interests, but it is especially brave for someone to publicly go against the wishes and standard thinking of the profession and general career area they come from. Just think about the endless number of doctors and health care professionals that have been cancelled over the past five years who dared stray one inch from expected thinking. From my vantage point, there was something in the way the two other members of the Board were looking at her with a bit of a look of disbelief when she was stating her case against fluoride. Make no mistake, this was a major crack in the wall of the local/Massachusetts establishment and this principled woman has opened herself up to potential backlash if word were to get around too much of her belief to remove fluoride from public water, given she is someone with the “right” Massachusetts degrees and experience. Fluoride is something the Massachusetts mainstream has fought tooth and nail to protect.
Changing hearts, minds, and policy takes time. It never happens overnight, instead requiring relentless persistence, patience, empathy, and many many steps. Still, in the case of raising awareness about fluoride, as well as the plethora of other MAHA-related issues, with the goal of improving the health and well-being of the population, we are clearly on the right track now. Thank you to the Newburyport Board of Health for allowing this important discussion. It is time to keep moving forward, as always.