More than 100 members of Congress call for US to ‘suspend’ controversial health study on alcohol
More than 100 members of Congress have called for the US government to “suspend” an influential study about the health risks of alcohol – as beer, wine and liquor makers raised concerns that a panel doing the research is staffed by anti-alcohol activists.
In a letter this week, US lawmakers including New York Reps. Nicole Malliotakis and Mike Lawler seized on the fact that the study is being conducted by a group called the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking — or ICCPUD.
Alcohol executives fear that the study could include tough recommendations against alcohol use as it advises on the US government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are due for a regular five-year update in 2025.
“There would be a ripple effect if the guidelines change and consumers could reduce their consumption of alcohol,” Michael Kaiser, executive director of trade group WineAmerica, told The Post. “People will buy fewer bottles for consumption at home and might wait until they go out on the weekend.”
HSS hasn’t publicly commented on its decision to hire ICCPUD for the study, and didn’t respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
“HSS has offered no explanation and that’s the heart of the problem,” Kaiser said. “All signs point to the anti-alcohol movement.”
The lawmakers – many of them from beer-, wine- and liquor-producing states including California, Washington and Kentucky – ripped “the secretive process at ICCPUD” and claimed the group’s researchers “were not appropriately vetted for conflicts of interest,” according to the Monday letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and USDA Secretary Thomas Vilsack.
Among the researchers is Dr. Tim Naimi, who has previously recommended that adult males consume no more than one drink a day — down from the two drinks a day that have been recommended since 1980 by the US government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The DGA recommends one drink per day for women.
Others on the six-member DGA panel include Jürgen Rehm, senior scientist at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health; and Kevin Shield, a scientist who runs a World Health Organization center on addiction.
Last year, a WHO report concluded that “no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health” — the first such dire warning from the influential global nonprofit.
Among the letter’s signatories is Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who subpoenaed documents from the USDA on Sept. 30 demanding more transparency from the agency on how ICCPUD’s findings were gathered and will be used to set new dietary guidelines.
A week later, 110 members of Congress asked both the USDA and HSS to scrap ICCPUD’s study entirely, noting that another group – the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, or NASEM – has long handled research on alcohol consumption and also has been conducting a study that Congress had authorized.
They also griped that “interested stakeholders have had limited opportunities to comment and track all but one public meeting held in early August.”
Another trade group representing booze makers –The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States – accused ICCPUD of “overreach” and pushing an agenda from “biased anti-alcohol advocates.”
“We want it done like it’s always been done,” Kaiser said of NASEM’s decades-old role shaping alcohol recommendations.
Not all of the scientific community is lining up against alcohol.
“It’s tempting to assume that because heavy alcohol consumption is very bad, lesser amounts must be at least a little bad. But the science isn’t there,” according to a Harvard Public Health editorial in August.
In the 1980s and 1990s the wine industry – especially red wine – benefitted from research showing that drinking vino was healthy, “now the pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction that contemporary narratives suggest every ounce of alcohol is dangerous,” according to the editorial.
“Now, we’re told you can die from drinking a glass at lunch,” wine importer Michael Yurch complained in an interview with The Post. “Why all of a sudden is it so bad for you?”
Wine consumption worldwide declined by 4% last year to a 27-year low as consumers were stung by higher prices due to inflation and as wine lost market share to spirits, industry experts say.
Consumption of spirits in the U.S. was down 3% and beer down 3.5% for the first seven months of 2024, according to IWSR, a global drinks data and analytics firm.
Younger people drink less than previous generations, according to reports, while non-alcoholic beverages are seen as a fast growing niche market. The legalization of marijuana in many states has also contributed to lower alcohol sales, experts say.
