DeSantis says he will sign law to ban adding fluoride to tap water in Florida

Recalling his fight against COVID masks and vaccine mandates, Gov. Ron DeSantis came to Miami on Monday to announce that he plans to sign legislation banning the addition of fluoride to tap water statewide.

“It’s forced medication when they’re jamming fluoride into your water supply,” DeSantis said at a press conference hours after Miami-Dade commissioners voted to end the county’s fluoridation program. “Why should this be forced on people?”

DeSantis said he’ll sign Florida Senate Bill 700 — agricultural legislation that includes the fluoridation ban — once he formally receives it from the legislature. The legislation will take effect July 1 and force local governments to halt adding fluoride in drinking water — ending an oral-health program that’s in place for about 70% of Florida’s residents, according to a state estimate.

The bill passed on April 29 in the middle of Miami-Dade’s own fight over fluoridation of tap water, which the county has been doing since the 1950s as a way to reduce cavities and other dental issues.

Once enacted, the ban signed by DeSantis would make Florida the second state after Utah to outlaw the addition of fluoride to drinking water, a practice the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called one of the great public-health achievements of the 20th century.

While some researchers have linked cognitive issues in children with fluoride consumption by their mothers during pregnancy, large medical groups reject those findings and call tiny amounts of fluoride in tap water both safe and a boon to dental health.

But the pro-fluoride view is losing political clout. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s health secretary, wants it removed from drinking supplies.

After a direct appeal from the governor’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Miami-Dade commissioners on April 1 voted to end the regular addition of fluoride into county tap water. Mayor Daniella Levine Cava vetoed the item on April 11, and commissioners voted 8-4 to overturn her veto on Tuesday morning.

DeSantis scheduled his Miami appearance on the same day as the override vote and invited the Miami-Dade legislation’s sponsor, Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, to join him at a lectern with a “Free State of Florida” message attached.

“I thought we learned our lesson with COVID,” said Gonzalez, who first joined the commission in 2022 as a DeSantis appointee and won a four-year term last year. “I thought we weren’t going to make those mistakes anymore. But sometimes people just won’t let things go.”

During the event, DeSantis promised to sign another bill that critics say is based on fringe science. The legislation targets alleged weather modification efforts and other concerns related to chemicals added to the atmosphere through aircraft.

Part of the concern stems from citizen suspicions about vapor trails left by jets — known as “chemtrails” to some and just a normal part of aircraft exhaust to experts trying to debunk the worries.

The sponsor of Florida Senate Bill 56, Sen. Ileana Garcia, a Miami-Dade Republican, said her legislation will create an outlet for people to report concerns about what they see in the sky and then allow the state government to follow up on the complaint. “Let’s track, investigate and mitigate,” Garcia said at the event.

During her speech, Garcia introduced a high-profile supporter of her legislation: Marla Maples, an ex-wife of Trump. Maples sat in the front row of the event but didn’t speak. She has posted on social media about jets’ “chemtrails” appearing in the sky and “dimming the sun and leaving a heavy haze over the ocean.”

DeSantis said there’s no evidence of weather modification happening in Florida, but he described the legislation as a way to block any future efforts linked to combating climate change.

“There are movements — private businesses — and their view is we can save you from global warming by injecting different things into the atmosphere,” he said. “And that is not something we’re going to do in Florida. … We’re the Sunshine State.”

This story was originally published May 6, 2025 at 7:15 PM.