BREAKING: US Alcohol Guidelines in Chaos as Watchdog Killed and Report Buried

The fight over drinking just got messier

The Trump administration has announced plans to torch America’s alcohol watchdog and shove its report into a drawer.

Earlier this week, Tom Cole, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, called time on ICCPUD, dismissed by Republicans as a nanny-state outfit meddling in adult drinking.

Yesterday, Vox revealed that ICCPUD’s contentious Alcohol Intake and Health Study has also been buried. Together, the two decisions make one thing clear: this White House won’t be embracing the “no safe level” message on alcohol any time soon.

The way it’s been done could hardly be messier.

Two panels, one drama

Buckle up. You’re about to wade into the acronym swamp.

The most important is the DGAs or Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Reviewed every five years, they’re meant to advise Americans on the healthiest way to eat and drink.

Since they were first issued in 1980, they’ve also included guidance on alcohol consumption: two standard drinks a day for men and one for women.

But the science changes, and so do the DGAs, and now it’s time for the 2025-2030 version.

The DGAs are supposed to be prepared by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), but after years of blistering criticism, they got sick of it:

• 2017: Washington hauled in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) to clean up the Dietary Guidelines process.
  

• 2022: HHS started work on the 2025-2030 edition — and asked ICCPUD to run its own alcohol review.
  (ICCPUD stands for the Interagency Coordinating Committee on Underage Drinking. Its core mission isn’t really adult alcohol consumption.)
  

• 2023: Congress told USDA to hire NASEM and gave them $1.3 million.

Two rival panels, one under ICCPUD and one under NASEM, both digging into the same questions.

Two researchers appointed to the NASEM study were accused of having ties to the alcohol industry and were kicked off the panel.

Then it turned out that two of the ICCPUD panellists had been involved with the controversial Canadian guidelines.

Canada drops a bombshell

In 2019, Canada’s Department of Health asked the Canadian Center on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) to rethink Canada’s drinking guidelines.

CCSAA’s guidelines, published in 2023, outraged Canadians. Their report claimed that while a mere one to two drinks a week were “likely safe”; three or more raised the risk of serious health consequences.

In other words, more than two drinks in a whole week is trouble.

Dan Malleck, a professor of history who specialises in Prohibition, said the CCSAA’s recommendations echoed temperance rhetoric.

Sixteen addiction specialists wrote a letter to Le Devoir newspaper saying that “moralistic prevention approaches are doomed to failure”.

Then an eagle-eyed libertarian called David Clement did a deep dive into the CCSA document and discovered that three authors had either volunteered for Movendi, a temperance group, or had accepted travel from them for speaking.

One of those who accepted travel was Dr Tim Naimi, later appointed to the ICCPUD committee.

Just to thicken the plot, George Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, told the Daily Mail that “the USDA could revise its alcohol advice to match Canada’s where people are advised to have just two drinks per week.”

The article went on to say: “Dr George Koob — who admits enjoying a couple of glasses of Chardonnay a week — said he was watching Canada's 'big experiment' with interest.”

So it began to look like the US was already considering following Canada’s lead, before the reports were even published.

Cue political fireworks

Then Congress got involved.

• April 2024: House Oversight chair James Comer demanded to know why ICCPUD was writing a report when Congress had told USDA to hand it to NASEM. HHS and USDA stonewalled.
  

• October 2024: Comer unleashed subpoenas, accusing the agencies of hiding documents.
  

• Within days, 113 lawmakers piled on, signing a letter demanding the ICCPUD study be shut down.

ICCPUD carried on.

The NASEM report, published in December 2024, affirmed that there is “moderate certainty” that people who drink alcohol in moderation have lower all-cause mortality (death from any cause) than people who don’t drink at all.

It also noted “moderate certainty” that moderate drinking raises the risk of both breast and colon cancer.

In January 2025, ICCPUD released its first draft. It said the risk of death from alcohol began at low levels.

By January, officials were staring at a split-screen nightmare. One study reaffirmed the J-curve. The other warned that you’re courting cancer after a couple of beers.

What happens now?

After all that drama, there’s no sign of the DGAs, despite the fact that Reuters reported they were expected before August.

And forget two drinks for men, one for women. Reuters also reported that the Trump administration is going to dump the alcohol guidelines altogether, and just recommend that people “drink in moderation”.

Also, goodbye ICCPUD.

The pièce de résistance: Vox reports that the White House has shoved ICCPUD’s final draft — which they called “a harrowing read” — into a drawer, pretending it never happened.

Vox claims this is because of alcohol industry interference, and quotes a neo-Prohibitionist group that says so. It also claims that the NASEM report’s findings are “controversial”, even though they’re consistent with decades of epidemiology.

(Note that the NASEM report was put together by 14 scientists and then reviewed by 11 more, so it’s hardly got the alcohol industry’s sticky fingers all over it.)

This is me speculating, but maybe the Trump administration cut ICCPUD and buried the report so it can look like it’s eliminating both waste and government overreach, while also unwinding something created by the Biden administration.

As the relevant press release said, “the Biden Administration improperly used [ICCPUD] to carry out activities related to adult alcohol consumption”.

The pity in all of this is that ICCPUD has a serious role to play — it coordinates national drug and alcohol policies, and compiles data on underage drinking. All for just $1 million.

Reports should not be buried. They should be published and debated.

This decision is just going to spawn even more accusations that wine, spirits and beer people are in league to suppress important information.

What this means

If the rumours are true, it sounds unlikely that US citizens will be faced with Canadian-style temperance recommendations.

And, by the way, Canada’s government never adopted the controversial CCSA guidelines either — the old guidelines are still on their website.

The next showdown is coming up in New York. Temperance activists and alcohol lobbyists will be circling each other at the UN’s High-Level Meeting on Noncommunicable Diseases later this month. Think Davos for liquor taxes.

A special side event has been organised. Movendi International, in partnership with Estonia, Slovenia, Latvia, and Thailand, will discuss approaches to global alcohol policy.

And guess who else will be there?

Canada’s CCSA, the group behind the two-drinks-a-week bombshell.

NB: I updated this post to make it clear who NASEM and ICCPUD are. There were so many acronyms floating about, I forgot to define them all.