OPINION – September 4, 2012 -- While part-time Aspen resident Lance Armstrong insists that nobody needs to cry for him over being busted for illegal drugs, spare a tear for fellow Aspenites who still have illegal drugs in their drinking water courtesy of their indolent councilors! For according to the US Food and Drug Administration, the fluorides added to their drinking water have since 1993 been ‘unapproved new drugs’ yet Aspen’s councilors decided last March that because they had discussed the issue long enough they decided to do nothing.
Residents of Portland, Oregon, however have been luckier because their councilors have always stood by their democratic responsibility to uphold the rights of the people they represent. A key right is for residents to decide for themselves what drug they and their families should take. For decades councilors have kept this medicinally unapproved drug out of Portland’s drinking water, the same as almost every other European city has since World War II.
A rare exception is European is Dublin, Ireland where in the 1960s its councilors, who spoke out strongly against fluoridation, were over-ruled by the national government. A bullying health minister Sean McEntee, threatened the council with dissolution if it continued in its opposition to this hated mass treatment. Another European exception was the Swiss city of Basel which eventually in 2003 after 42 years, ended fluoridation because it was ineffective and caused unacceptably high rates of dental fluorosis in children.
Today, residents of Dublin and from all over Ireland (bar the un-fluoridated North of Ireland) are invoking their rights under a European directive to refuse this fluoride treatment via their drinking water. Because the untrialled fluorosilicates added to Irish
drinking water to supposedly prevent dental decay are medicinally unlicensed, consumers are refusing their consent to be treated with them by the Irish health minister *. As the same minister is a medical practitioner, he is well aware that prescribing off-label products to people without informing them of the fact or even of its adverse effects, makes the prescriber in the European Union criminally liable.
Portland councilors have a grave duty to protect the rights of their constituents. A fundamentally important right is to let residents decide for themselves which if any, type of medication they wish for their family and themselves. Last March Aspen councilors abandoned their residents to vested dental interests in a disgraceful betrayal of democratic trust. Fifty years ago Dublin councilors did the same and today only two thirds of our over-fluoridated teenagers in Ireland have normal tooth enamel. Portland councilors, please do your duty by your constituents.
Robert Pocock is a long time camapigner against fluoridation in Ireland and has an open petition with the European Parliament against unlicensed fluorosilicates added to drinking water anywhere in the European Union. He is associated with the website www.irelandagainstfluoridation.org.
The author encourages the Portland City Council to consider his concerns before taking a vote to fluoridate its water
September 5, 2012
