Trump Administration Shelves Government Study On Alcohol and Health
This week, the Trump administration made some moves alluding to what might be in store for the upcoming 2025-2030 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) in regards to alcohol consumption.
In a Monday press release, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee announced that the government will be defunding the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD), a committee established by Congress in 2004 to combat underage drinking and conduct research on the health effects of alcohol consumption. And now, according to an article published by Vox on Thursday, the final draft of an ICCPUD-conducted study on the health risks associated with alcohol consumption will not be published.
The study was initially commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under President Joe Biden in early 2022. In January 2025, the ICCPUD published the first draft of their findings, arguing that alcohol negatively affects mortality rates even at low levels of regular consumption. According to Vox, which spoke with three authors of the study, the final draft had been passed off to the Trump Administration in March. In August, those authors report receiving a call from the Trump administration in which they were told the admin “did not intend to publish the final draft of the study or its findings.”
This will likely have an impact on the upcoming update of the DGAs, which are reviewed every five years, and include information regarding safe levels of alcohol consumption. Currently, the guideline asserts that two standard drinks per day for men and one for women are safe rates of consumption.
To determine this threshold, HHS and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) — the two agencies responsible for drafting the recommendations — examine reports from both ICCPUD and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). NASEM is a large group of doctors, medical professionals, and scientists with specialized expertise to evaluate data that is then peer reviewed prior to publication. The first draft of the ICCPUD report conflicted with findings from an earlier, Congressionally-funded NASEM study. In December 2024, NASEM reported that moderate drinking has some health benefits, including lower all-cause mortality and decreased risk of cardiovascular disease.
The conflicting reports have naturally led to some confusion. And now, with the White House reportedly shelving the ICCPUD report altogether, it remains unclear what stance the 2025 DGA update will have on alcohol consumption and its potential health impacts. It also remains unclear exactly when we can expect to see these updated guidelines. In May, Reuters quoted HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying that the new DGA guidelines were expected to arrive before August, but that has yet to come to fruition.
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