People had legitimate concerns about fluoridation (and some still do, as far as I know) but this aspect of the movie was made to depict them (and anyone else distrusting communism) as pure kooks.
Colonel! Can you possibly imagine what is going to happen to you, your frame, outlook, way of life, and everything, when they learn that you have obstructed a telephone call to the President of the United States? Can you imagine? Shoot it off! Shoot! With a gun! That’s what the bullets are for, you twit!
Yup—great info today on fluoridation.
It turns it that fluoride was a toxic waste product from WWII manufacturing, and Alcoa decided a great way to make money was to fund studies showing it was great for tooth decay, and then lobby municipalities to put it in the water supply.
It wasn’t a Commie plot after all, but a corporate one.
Putting it in the water supply was a bad idea then, and a bad idea now.
But, Dr. Strangelove was an amazingly great movie despite their mangled history and ideology. Great leftist propaganda can be done, but Hollyweird today lacks the talent to do it.