Comment by freehorse

> How has the debate been solved by the rest of the world?

By having official country-level guidelines by the health ministries or similar for people to brush their teeth with toothpaste containing fluoride, and specific guidelines around it for kids, as trivial as it may sound. Along with experts' reviews providing more details on these decisions, and explaining tradeoffs properly.

Fluoride containing toothpaste is the main recommendation, even in places that fluoridate the water (which are the minority). There is not much to add to this apart from refining these guidelines. Eg in the EU where some countries fluoridate water, most don't, there is no huge debate about it overall. Most eu countries that fluoridated the water stopped doing it some point mostly because it was no longer needed in preventing cavities, and prob largely due to logistics/costs than possible risks.

Your second paragraph reflects my personal views on it, too. The "banning" is weird, esp since, according to the article, it comes from people that seem to advocate against use of fluoride in general in toothpastes etc. The discussion should be around best policies to prevent cavities etc, but it does not seem to be around that. I see nothing wrong with local communities deciding if they want to put fluoride or not in their water, based on their own opinions but also general situation. Maybe in some much poorer areas fluoridation of water could be beneficial until some other measures take place, for example.