EXCLUSIVE – The Trump administration has killed a draft proposal to cut alcohol limits in half, sources say

By Emma Rumney and Jessica DiNapoli

LONDON/NEW YORK, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Last spring, a group of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials was drafting a proposal to halve the recommended limit of alcohol a day for men, according to two former government sources and documents seen by Reuters.

“Alcohol is known to cause cancer,” health officials wrote in a draft version of their proposal reviewed by Reuters. The group was tasked with updating the Alcohol Advice on Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030, the US government’s roadmap for healthy drinking and eating that influences school lunches, medical counseling and other policies.

The draft proposal added that thousands of American lives could be saved each year if both men and women drank one or fewer drinks per day. The advice for women remains the same at one drink per day.

“It seemed clear to me that cancer epidemiology suggested an increased risk of breast cancer and head and neck cancer with less than one drink per day,” said David Berrigan, a former program director at the National Cancer Institute, a branch of the US Department of Health, who was part of the group that recommended tightening the guidelines.

But that proposal never saw the light of day.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration took the opposite tack, publishing new guidelines that offered no advice on servings, instead advising Americans to drink less for better health.

Changing advice on alcohol

The change removes the recommendation for ages 35 and over that men limit alcohol consumption to two drinks per day and women to one drink per day. It also follows a years-long lobbying campaign by the liquor industry, worth about $1.2 trillion in global sales according to beverage market research firm IWSR, to hinder the work of health authorities.

Public health experts and researchers warned that the change could lead to higher alcohol consumption and, ultimately, more alcohol-related death and disease.

“People will redefine what that moderation means to them, and frankly, that can be quite a wide range,” said Karen Hacker, who serves as director of the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through 2025.

In a statement, HHS said its policies are driven by evidence and gold-standard science. “To suggest that anything other than science guides our work on this president’s priorities is absurd.”

Announcing the guidelines at a White House press conference Wednesday, celebrity physician and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz said alcohol should be consumed in moderation. “Don’t take this for breakfast,” he said.

There was never good data to support the previous guidance of two drinks per day for men and one for women, he continued.

A White House official told Reuters that it was clear from the new guidelines that the Trump administration had not been swayed by the industry, and that alcohol consumption was at a multi-decade low anyway.

Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. do not drink, and the Make America Healthy Again social movement aligned with them makes minimal reference to alcohol, focusing on efforts to reduce childhood vaccinations, a position rejected by major medical groups, and have fewer preservatives in food.

The International Alliance for Responsible Drinking, a group funded by major brewers and spirits makers, says moderate drinking is less risky. Industry groups and companies either declined to comment, did not respond or said they wanted to ensure no changes were made to the science-based guidance.

Andrew Langer, director of the Center for Regulatory Freedom at the Conservative Political Conference Foundation, called the new guidelines a “compromise position” between the neo-temperance movement, which says people shouldn’t drink anything, and another group, which says the US government shouldn’t make statements about alcohol.

He said it would be “a bit disingenuous and disingenuous” for the administration to take steps to loosen regulations on marijuana and psychedelics while enforcing stricter policies on alcoholism.

DUELING alcohol studies

The U.S. Dietary Guidelines are the focus of lobbying by the industries they influence, from sugar, cattle, and dairy to the wine, beer, and spirits industries.

Top producers such as Miller Lite owner Johnnie Walker whiskey maker Diageo and Molson Coors and their trade associations launched a campaign on the 025-2030 guidelines until at least 2021.

In 2022, Congress appropriated $1.3 million for a study of the health effects of alcohol conducted by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), a congressionally chartered nonprofit organization. Two former liquor lobbyists said the industry lobbied lawmakers for the study.

Funding for the study was first proposed in a bill introduced by Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin, a major production hub for Molson Coors, America’s second largest brewer.

Lobbying disclosures show lobbyists for Molson Coors and the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States petitioned lawmakers on Baldwin’s bill in 2022. The spirits industry body said in a statement that it wants to ensure alcohol guidance is based “not on opinion or ideology”.

Baldwin’s office said the legislation was written with input from many lawmakers but he stood by funding the study as “sound science needed to inform public health guidelines.”

Molson did not respond to a request for comment, and Diageo declined to comment.

Released in December 2024, the NASEM study concluded that moderate drinking is associated with a lower risk of dying from any cause, something the industry regularly promotes, although it also found some negative health effects.

Meanwhile, in February 2022, HHS officials began planning a separate study on the health effects of alcohol, public records show. This study, conducted by scientists commissioned by health authorities and called the Alcohol Consumption and Health Study, warned that even one drink a day could increase the risk of liver, mouth and throat cancer. The draft findings of that study were released in January 2025.

Industry groups argued that the NASEM report was more independent, credible and scientific than the government’s work, which was led by scientists biased against alcohol, a position disputed by public health groups.

In January 2025, Science Over Bias, a coalition of alcohol, agriculture and hospitality associations, said in a statement that the HHS report was the product of “flawed, opaque and unprecedented processes, biases and conflicts of interest” and should be ignored.

“People need to know that alcohol causes cancer,” said Priscilla Martinez, one of the HHS-commissioned scientists working on the Alcohol Use and Health Study. She added that she was disappointed that the report, which she called scientifically rigorous, had been sidelined.

Alcohol specialists were fired or reassigned

On February 13, about a month after both studies were released, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was sworn in as Trump’s health secretary.

In early April, Kennedy laid off more than 10,000 people in a major overhaul of the Health Department and its agencies. Two of the five top health officials who planned to recommend stricter guidelines, including the CDC’s lead on alcohol, were fired as part of the mass layoffs, according to two former government sources.

The rest were later removed from the brewing project, the two people said. One of the people said the rest of the team was fired and replaced in May.

Dorothy Fink, a senior health official with a background in endocrinology, took charge of writing the guidelines for alcohol, three sources familiar with the matter said. Fink did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An HHS spokeswoman pointed to information in a scientific report accompanying the guidelines to Reuters, which said the Trump administration followed its own evidence review conducted by subject matter experts and scientific work to inform them.

The Trump administration ultimately used the industry-preferred NASEM study for new alcohol guidelines, according to the Scientific Report.

Jennifer Tiller, a newly appointed senior adviser at the USDA, also oversees drinking guidelines, meeting with alcohol trade groups in the spring and summer, emails obtained by Reuters show. Tiller previously worked as a congressional staffer, a role in which she questioned health officials’ work on alcohol, according to emails obtained by Reuters.

Tiller referred Reuters’ questions to the USDA press office. A USDA spokesperson said the guidelines are based on scientific evidence: “Recommendations, like evidence, evolve over time.”

(Reporting by Emma Rumney in London and Jessica DiNapoli in New York; Additional reporting by Leigh Douglas in Washington; Editing by Lisa Zucca and Michael Lermonth)