The Report You Haven't Seen Overshadows The New Alcohol Recommendations
The Wine Industry Dodged A Bullet of Bias and Unauthorized Deceit
Today, the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” was released by the Department of Health and Human Services. It is an important and highly influential document that will be cited by schools in their teaching, by researchers, by public health officials, in lawsuits, and in other venues.
However, it was not the most important document released today concerning alcohol consumption and its impact on health in the United States.
That document is entitled, “A STUDY FRAUGHT WITH BIAS: How the Biden Administration's Alcohol Intake and Health Study Tried to Undermine the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans”.
What’s inside this document, produced and authored by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Majority Staff, outlines the efforts taken by the Biden Administration to push an anti-alcohol agenda on the country. However, the document is more important for what it demonstrates about how perilous the alcohol industry’s position is in society. It illustrates how surreptitious and unauthorized activities could easily deal a blow to the wine and alcohol industry.
THE BACKGROUND
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) was authorized to be the body directed to study the relationship between alcohol consumption and negative health outcomes in order to inform the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines. However, in April 2022, the Biden Administration contravened the congressional authorization and itself authorized the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD) to conduct an alcohol intake and health study (AIH). That study was meant influence the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines.
This duplicative and unauthorized study prompted the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to launch an investigation and to request documents from the Biden Administration on the workings of the ICCPUD effort. The administration provided no more than 31 pages of documents, spurring the investigative committee to subpoena the documents. The Biden Administration failed to comply, and the Committee had to wait for the incoming Trump administration and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy to supply the requested documents, which include communication between the members of the ICCPUD Study Group created to undertake this duplicative research.
THE GOVERNMENT’S ANTI-ALCOHOL EFFORTS DOCUMENTED
Today’s report from the Committee is based on those documents. Below are the primary conclusions in the report:
The ICCPUD AIH study group in fact was fraught with bias. All six study group members are anti-alcohol advocates who had conducted previous research linking negative health outcomes with alcohol. The evidence points to the AIH study group having a predetermined goal—to publish a biased study that parroted a “Canadian model” conclusion that no amount of alcohol consumption is safe. The AIH study group then took active steps to conceal their study from Congress and the public.
Without the work of alcohol industry trade groups and the Committee Chairman James Comer, it is highly likely that today’s Alcohol Reccomendations in the new Dietary Guidelines would have included the now notorious claim by the World Health Organization that there is “no safe level” of alcohol consumption and would have duplicated the Canadian recommendation that Americans drink no more than two glasses of wine per week. This would have especially been true had the Biden Administration been in control of the creation of the Dietary Guidelines in 2025.
Regarding the bias that could have easily led to this outcome, I quote from today’s Committee Report:
The entire ICCPUD AIH study group was fraught with biases. All six members of the Scientific Review Panel chosen to conduct the study are affiliated with U.S. and international anti-alcohol advocacy groups. After reviewing the internal documents and communications from HHS, the Committee is deeply concerned the AIH study group had a pre-determined goal— to publish a biased study that concluded under a “Canadian model” that no amount of alcohol consumption is safe by recruiting scientists who would develop the research that supported that conclusion.
The new recommendations on alcohol consumption released today say very little about how much to drink. Besides recommending that at risk individuals not drink and not republishing the “2-drinks per day for men and 1-drink per day for women” advice, they say, "Consume less alcohol for better overall health.”
The alcohol industry can live with this new and limited guidance by the federal government. It isn’t perfect, but the industry can breathe a sigh of relief that the agenda of the illegitimate ICCPUD study group (to move as close to prohibitionsim as possible by promoting unteathered and radical notions like ‘there is no safe level of alcohol consumption’) was not part of the new Guidelines. It easily could have been, which would have led to a serious further decline in alcohol consumption, not to mention an official demonization of the wine and alcohol industry.
WHAT’S NEXT?
First, we can expect over the next few days to hear from the loudest members of the anti-alcohol cabal that the new alcohol recommendations were influenced or even crafted by the “alcohol lobby”. The fight over the narrative will be fierce. The new alcohol recommendations will also be cast as being tainted by the “MAHA” movement by political partisans.
Additionally, while the new alcohol recommendations dropped the 2-glass/1-glass per day recommendations that have been in place since 1990, the lack of specific consumption recommendations in the new Guidelines will mean many reporters and public health professionals are likely to continue to cite these per-day recommendations
Finally, we can expect the effort among many to continue to demonize alcohol producers and alcohol consumption, while ignoring the real danger: overconsumption. The goals will remain the same: increase taxes on alcohol, restrict alcohol marketing, restrict access to alcohol, and reduce the threshold for drinking and driving violations to the point that a single drink will put folks over the limit.
A bullet was dodged today. More importantly, we learned just how easy it would be for the most powerful institution—the federal government—to pursue and achieve the goals of the anti-alcohol cabal looking to institute the policies mentioned above. And we learned that vigilance is necessary to push back on these kinds of efforts.
By Tom Wark
Tom Wark is the publisher of Fermentation, a source of commentary on the wine business that he has written since 2004. He is also the publisher of THE SPILL, a free, daily newsletter that curates the best wine content on the web.
Spot-on analysis here. The part about how six anti-alcohol advocates were stacked on a panel thatsupposed to be impartial really highlights institutional capture in action. I've seen similar dynamics in other regulatory spaces where activists get embedded as "neutral experts" and then push predetermined conclusions. The fact that they tried to conceal it from oversight just shows they knew the setup wouldn't pass the smell test.
Wark,
You're thin on facts, thick on insinuation. You label researchers as anti-alcohol to poison the well, then wave at a contravention without citing a statute or process rule, and attack a study you never show...no methods, preregistration, or findings. You then admit the guidelines didn’t adopt no safe level while crediting an unprovable industry rescue and spinning a prohibition slippery slope. As per usual, this is agenda first, evidence last.