Study details dangers of alcohol in small doses and is ignored by Trump administration when revamping health guidelines

Research indicating that alcohol consumption, even in modest doses, can increase health dangers was released on September 9. The scientific material was published in the “Research Journal on Alcohol and Drugs”, an independent academic journal.

The commission for the study came from the Department of Health and Human Services during the Biden administration, with an initial version presented in January 2025. However, the Trump administration chose to disregard the work, shelving it without evaluating its findings, in addition to omitting its data from the new American guidelines on alcohol consumption, established this year, and postponing the final version. This political decision raised questions about the prioritization of public health to the detriment of specific interests.

The research findings revealed that the risk of death from alcohol-related causes, including accidents and injuries, reached at least 1 in every 1,000 Americans who drank a dose of alcohol daily. This percentage rose to 1 in 100 among those who consumed two doses per day. For men in the United States, the lifetime risk of death has reached an alarming 1 in 25, even with two drinks a day, an amount often perceived as moderate.

Representatives of the alcoholic beverage sector, who sought to influence the debate surrounding the study, argue that the methodology used would be flawed and that the researchers would have an anti-alcohol bias. In contrast, in drafting the new alcohol guidelines, the Trump administration chose to validate separate research, authored by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a nonprofit entity, which presented contradictory conclusions, pointing out that moderate alcohol consumption could be associated with a reduced risk of death from various causes.