A US government study found the dangers of alcohol, but the new guidelines do not include the findings

A study commissioned by former US president Joe Biden’s administration to investigate alcohol-related health harm was released independently on Tuesday, after President Donald Trump’s administration decided not to include the researchers’ findings in new dietary guidelines amid backlash from the alcohol industry and a congressional committee.

The findings of this study, in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, are consistent with years of research that states that health risks increase with just one drink per day and that no level of alcohol has an impact on the risk of death. Even levels considered “moderate” raise the risk of premature death and more than 200 diseases, including heart disease and cancer, the researchers found.

The new study was one of two government reviews designed to help inform the new dietary guidelines. Released earlier this year, the guidelines advise drinking “less alcohol for better health.”

The authors of the independently released study said they did not provide detailed advice about the dangers of drinking.

One of the officials involved in the investigation by the Democratic Biden administration accused the Republican Trump administration of “sidelining” the investigation – an allegation the Trump administration denies.

Robert Vincent, the former chief of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration who led the yearlong effort, laid out the allegations in a published article and study.

Vincent was fired last year as part of government downsizing.

“The challenges facing alcohol policy today are not based on scientific uncertainty,” writes Vincent. “What is still debatable is whether evidence will properly inform policy when it conflicts with commercial interests.”

The controversy over the study underscored the strained relationship between the medical and scientific community and the Trump administration, which has questioned or ignored long-standing science in policymaking, fired dozens of veteran scientists from the federal workforce and cut science grants that advocates say help keep the U.S. at the forefront of medical innovation.

Industry, Republicans backed off course

After the researchers of this study released a report last year, the alcohol industry came together to fight it, and started campaigns to discredit their work.

The House of Representatives oversight committee also criticized the study, issuing a report earlier this year that it called “full of bias” and accused the study’s authors of drawing conclusions based on their previous research and affiliated organizations.

Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), denied any suggestion that the study was not reviewed.

HHS and the US Department of Agriculture “reviewed this study alongside a broader body of available scientific evidence and followed an established process to develop the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030,” she said. “Guidelines are informed by the totality of the scientific record, not a single report or analysis.”

Vincent told The Associated Press in an interview that the researchers thoroughly investigated the controversy and the findings are scientifically sound. He said that when he was in Trump’s office, he was “asked to kill the research” but he didn’t.

HHS did not immediately respond to that claim.

The study examines alcohol-related deaths only

The Trump administration earlier this year released new dietary guidelines that advise drinking “less alcohol for better health.” The researchers said they do not dispute that advice, but their findings support a more detailed and robust recommendation that older drinkers have one drink or less per day.

“I’m glad that they had a message that is consistent with our science, and that means that less is better,” said Dr. Timothy Naimi, director of the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and one of the authors of the study. “But giving people valuable information is necessary to create a truly informative guide.”

This study was different from another study commissioned by the US government to help inform dietary guidelines on this issue, which states that moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a decrease in mortality from all causes but an increase in the risk of other diseases.

Priscilla Martinez-Matyszczyk, one of the authors of the new study and deputy director of science at the Public Health Institute’s Alcohol Research Group, said that their study did not look at death from all causes but instead examined death caused mainly by alcohol to avoid confounding factors.

He also spoke about the issue raised by Dr. Mehmet Oz, director of the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in his explanations of the new guidelines: that drinking is “a social lubricant that brings people together” and that although not drinking is preferred, being social has health benefits.

“I don’t know of any research that has teased out the social effect on health,” says Martinez-Matyszczyk.

The study is consistent with other recent findings

The new findings “are consistent with the latest science showing that less is better when it comes to health,” Naimi said.

For example, a 2019 study in The Lancet found that moderate drinking slightly raises the risk of stroke and high blood pressure and offers no protective effects on health.

Moderate drinking was once thought to have heart benefits, but better research methods have thrown cold water on that idea. Older studies have compared groups of people on how much they drink instead of assigning people to drink or not, so they can’t prove cause and effect. When researchers adjust for things like education levels, income and access to health care, the benefits tend to disappear.

About half of Americans age 12 or older have drunk in the past month, researchers say, making it the most addictive substance in the U.S. One drink is the equivalent of a 12-ounce can of beer, a five-ounce glass of wine or a shot of liquor.