Alcohol Escapes a Government Crackdown—for Now

Just over a year ago, I wrote about the bureaucratic machinations in the U.S. attempting to import an anti-alcohol agenda into the government’s 2025 Dietary Guidelines. Now, it appears that alcohol has officially escaped the government’s wrath—at least for another half-decade.

The U.S. dietary guidelines are revised every five years, with the latest revision expected this year. The lead-up to the revision unfolds over several years, and recommendations for safe drinking levels are traditionally included alongside food in the final guidance. For decades, the guidelines have held that men can safely consume up to two alcoholic drinks a day and women one. But myriad sources from inside the federal government were reporting that the new guidelines were planning to include a declaration that “no amount of alcohol is acceptable for a healthy lifestyle.” (This was a standard imported from the World Health Organization, which declared in 2023 that “no amount of alcohol is safe”). 

This news supercharged a long-simmering debate over whether alcohol is good or bad (or simply medium) for you. Researchers have become increasingly split over this issue, with some sharing evidence that moderate alcohol consumption reduces overall mortality rates, while others point to studies finding a link between alcohol and cancer. Regardless of the science, however, the process through which the government was attempting to arrive at a “no safe level” declaration for alcohol was deeply alarming.

The dietary guidelines revisions are spearheaded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Biden-era HHS delegated the alcohol issue to the little-known Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD).

ICCPUD’s marching orders were to issue a report on the health impacts of drinking, but it turned out ICCPUD had stacked its deck. Reports started coming out that at least half of the six-person research panel not only had well-publicized anti-alcohol stances but also didn’t even reside in the United States. The decision over whether alcohol would be deemed safe or not was being put in the hands of a group of biased international academics who were essentially accountable to no one. (Several commentators have also pointed out that ICCPUD, whose putative focus is supposed to be underage drinking, was being put in charge of determining adult drinking recommendations.)

A potential “no safe level” declaration was particularly worrisome for the alcohol industry, since perceptions about the health impact of alcohol have already been trending negatively among younger demographics, a trend that would likely accelerate if the U.S. government were to state that no amount of alcohol is safe to drink. Attorney Sean O’Leary noted that such a declaration would also be likely to trigger a wave of Tobacco-style class action lawsuits against the drinks industry.

Congress—surprisingly—reacted to this backdoor attempt to smuggle a neo-prohibitionist agenda into the American dietary guidelines by playing a decently effective watchdog role. It first tasked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to prepare a separate report on the health effects of drinking, which concluded that while moderate drinking raises the risk of certain types of cancer, it reduces all-cause mortality by decreasing the risk of heart disease.

The remaining elephant in the room, however, was how President Donald Trump’s administration would handle the ICCPUD draft report that it inherited from the Biden administration. All eyes were on the new HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., famously a teetotaler, but he was silent about how the 2025 Dietary Guidelines would address alcohol.

At long last, in early September, the House Appropriations Committee announced it was planning to defund ICCPUD, followed by news that ICCPUD’s draft report would no longer play a role in the 2025 guidelines revisions. It now appears that the alternative NASEM report will inform the new guidelines, although it’s not even certain that the guidelines will mention alcohol at all anymore (RFK Jr. has previously suggested that the 2025 Guidelines would be a mere 4 pages long, down from 160 pages in 2020).

In the end, this counts as a narrow escape for the alcohol industry and U.S. drinkers. The science of drinking will likely be debated for years to come, but at the very least, the process should be allowed to play out in public view.

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