Is this serious proposal or is this 'seems like good idea after a few drinks' thought?

In theory, this might seem like sensible idea but I am willing to bet my house that Canadians across political spectrum will go batsh*t crazy if government proposes to put lithium in our water.

Government might get away with it 50 years ago or somesuch but now matter how often pols talk about Japan and Texas, people are not going to react well to Government plan to put mind controlling substance in our water to control populace's behaviour.

I was horrified by the headline, but my shock decreased significantly when I got to the part where the studies pointed out that there are communities that have such levels of lithium naturally occuring in their water supply. Then it becomes a question of whether our bodies require a certain amount of elemental lithium to function at their best, and people may not be getting the appropriate levels. Other comparisons besides fluoride are enriched wheat flour, vitamin D in milk and iodized salt.

Well because that would make sense….at least people would have a choice in the matter!

because use of psychotropic drugs has been shown to exacerbate existing predilictions for mental illness? (I'm actually relatively pro-legalization, but one of the big potential downsides to that policy is pot's effects on people with mental illness and people who are prone to mental illness)

I'm reminded of the Philip K. Dick short story in which the protagonist―a minor Party functionary in a future totalitarian dystopia―takes pills he bought from a street vendor, and is horrified when he turns on the TV to watch the Leader's speech.

The screen remained blank and then, by degrees, an image once more formed and established itself. It was not the Leader. Not the Absolute Benefactor of the People, in point of fact not a human figure at all.

He faced a dead mechanical construct, made of solid state circuits, of swiveling pseudopodia, lenses and a squawk-box. And the box began, in a droning din, to harangue him.

Staring fixedly, he thought, What is this? Reality? Hallucination, he thought. The peddler came across some of the psychedelic drugs used during the War of Liberation — he's selling the stuff and I've taken some, taken a whole lot! Making his way unsteadily to the vidphone, he dialed the Secpol station nearest his building. "I wish to report a pusher of hallucinogenic drugs," he said into the receiver.

Anyway, it turns out later that the drugs he took were really an anti-hallucinogenic, and the powers that be were doping the water supply with hallucinogens for decades. Fun stuff.