A new government study concludes that health risks from alcohol begin with just one drink per day, and that no level of alcohol has a protective effect on mortality.
The study, published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, was commissioned by President Joe Biden's administration to investigate alcohol-related health harms. It was released independently Tuesday after President Donald Trump's administration declined to feature its findings in new dietary guidelines, following pushback from the alcohol industry and a congressional committee.
Researchers found that even levels of drinking considered "moderate" raise the risk of premature death and more than 200 diseases, including heart disease and cancer. The findings align with years of prior research.
- Watch the full story in the video player below.
The new study was one of two government reviews meant to help inform the new dietary guidelines. The guidelines, released earlier this year, advised consuming "less alcohol for better overall health." The authors of the independently released study said that guidance did not provide detailed practical advice about the risks of drinking.
One official involved in the study accused the Trump administration of "sidelining" the research — an allegation the Trump administration denies.
Robert Vincent, a former Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration alcohol policy official who led the yearslong effort, made the accusation in an editorial published alongside the study. Vincent was laid off last year as part of a government reduction in force.
"The challenges confronting alcohol policy today are not rooted in scientific uncertainty," Vincent wrote. "What remains contested is whether evidence will meaningfully inform policy when it conflicts with commercial interests."
Vincent told The Associated Press that the researchers were thoroughly vetted for conflicts and the findings were scientifically sound. He said that while he was in the Trump administration, he was "asked to kill the study" but did not. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to that claim.
Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for HHS, denied any notion that the study was not considered.
HHS and the U.S. Department of Agriculture "reviewed the study alongside the broader body of available scientific evidence and followed the established process for developing the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans," Hilliard said. "The Guidelines are informed by the totality of the scientific record, not any single report or analysis."
The researchers said they do not dispute the dietary guidelines' advice, but that their findings support a more detailed and forceful recommendation that current adult drinkers consume one drink or fewer per day.
"I'm glad that they had a message that corresponds with our science, and that is that less is best," said Dr. Timothy Naimi, director of the University of Victoria's Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and one of the study's authors. "But giving people quantity information is necessary to make a truly informative guideline."
The new study differed from the other government-commissioned research used to help inform the dietary guidelines, which found moderate alcohol use was associated with a decreased risk of mortality from all causes but also an increased risk of some diseases.
Priscilla Martinez-Matyszczyk, one of the authors of the new study and a deputy scientific director at the Public Health Institute's Alcohol Research Group, said their study did not look at mortality from all causes. Instead, it examined mortality specifically attributed to alcohol to avoid confounding factors.
Martinez-Matyszczyk also addressed a point raised by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, who said in his explanations of the new guidelines that drinking is "a social lubricant that brings people together" and that being social has health benefits even if not drinking is preferred.
"I don't know of any studies that have teased out the social effect from the health effect," Martinez-Matyszczyk said.
The new findings are "in line with the latest science that basically shows less is better when it comes to health," Naimi said.
A 2019 study in Lancet found that moderate drinking slightly raised the risk of stroke and high blood pressure and offered no protective effects on health. Moderate drinking was once thought to have benefits for the heart, but better research methods have challenged that idea. Older studies compared groups of people by how much they drink instead of randomly assigning people to drink or not, so they could not prove cause and effect. When researchers adjusted for factors like education levels, income and health care access, the benefits tended to disappear.
About half of Americans ages 12 and older had a drink in the past month, researchers said, making alcohol the most commonly used addictive substance in the U.S. One drink is the equivalent of about one 12-ounce can of beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine or a shot of liquor.
The dispute over the study underscored increasingly tense relations between the medical and scientific community and the Trump administration, which has questioned or ignored longstanding science in its policymaking, fired veteran scientists from the federal workforce and cut scientific grants that proponents say help keep the U.S. at the forefront of medical innovation.
After the study's researchers released a draft report last year, the alcohol industry mobilized against it, launching campaigns to discredit its work. The House oversight committee also criticized the study, releasing a report earlier this year that called it "fraught with bias" and accused the study authors of having predetermined conclusions based on their past research and affiliations.
Click here for full report
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
