Fact Check: Did Trump and RFK Jr. Hide the Link Between Alcohol and Cancer?

No. Federal dietary guidelines have made that connection since the 1980s, but some anti-alcohol activists are mad they didn't get to rewrite the rules this year.

Anti-alcohol lobbyists have accused the Trump administration of burying a new government-funded report that draws a link between drinking and cancer—and warn that Americans will be harmed as a result.

But that's a claim, made in an article published by Vox earlier this month, that leans on several half-truths, as well as an inaccurate characterization of the underlying report and how it came to be. As Reason detailed in a cover story earlier this year, the very existence of that report was the result of a flawed and biased process. It is not that the Trump administration is trying to silence important findings or keep essential health data from the public—rather, the administration seems to be correctly skeptical of this study and its authors' attempt to influence the drafting of the new dietary guidelines set to be published later this year.

Let's begin with the claims of public health malfeasance. In the article by Vox reporter Dylan Scott, the White House is accused of "work[ing] against the best interest of public health" by refusing to publish the final version of the Alcohol Intake and Health Study that was commissioned by the Biden administration in 2022. Keeping the report under wraps will allegedly keep Americans in the dark about the link between drinking and cancer, and "people are going to get sick who might have avoided getting sick, because they might have decreased their drinking," Priscilla Martinez, deputy scientific director of the Alcohol Research Group at the Public Health Institute, tells Scott.

If Americans are curious about the link between alcohol and cancer, there are many readily available resources for them to consult. In fact, the very nutritional guidelines that Martinez and her co-authors hope to influence as they are updated this year have made that link since the very first edition in 1980. "Cancer of the throat and neck is much more common in people who drink and smoke than in people who don't," is how that report put it.

The most recent version of the dietary guidelines, published in 2020, includes this warning: "Emerging evidence suggests that even drinking within the recommended limits may increase the overall risk of death from various causes, such as from several types of cancer."

Indeed, curious Americans could even read the draft report of the Alcohol Intake and Health Study, which was submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services in January and is readily available online. Or they could read that very Vox piece (or a recent article in The New York Times) that summarizes the report's findings. It is a bit bizarre for the report's coauthors to claim they have been silenced when their claims are being printed in such widely read publications—certainly more widely read than a government report would be.

In light of all that, it is simply laughable to claim that the Trump administration is somehow preventing Americans from learning about the cancer risk that comes from drinking alcohol.

The next question that should be asked—but that the Vox article fails to engage—is why these anti-drinking activists would try to frame the matter in those terms? To answer that, you must know a few facts that are glossed over by Vox.

Scott helpfully explains that his sources for the article are three of the six members of the committee that drafted the Alcohol Intake and Health Study, including Martinez. What he fails to explain is that none of the authors are dietitians or nutritionists—the types of scientists you'd expect to draft a report intended to guide the writing of the nutritional guidelines. All six are experts in other fields, and all six have an extensive track record of warning about the risks of alcohol.

As I wrote in the May issue of Reason, there is nothing wrong with including these perspectives, of course. But when that perspective is the only perspective included in an official report, it becomes more than fair to question its validity. Those questions become even more valid when you realize that the Biden administration set up this six-member committee under the auspices of the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD), a federal entity created in 2004 to "coordinate all federal agency activities related to the problem of underage drinking."

The dietary guidelines have nothing to do with underage drinking. The recommended amount of alcohol consumption for Americans under age 21 is zero.

Scott notes that the six researchers behind the report "submitted conflict-of-interest paperwork ahead of joining the project." But this, too, is misleading. Acknowledging a conflict of interest is meaningless if you don't take steps to address it.

Again, as I explained in that May cover story, conflicts of interest in studies overseen by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), for example, would typically be resolved by removing certain individuals or by ensuring that an individual with the counterviewpoint serves on the committee as well. The ICCPUD committee that produced this report at the request of the Biden administration operated with no such requirements and seems to have stacked the deck with anti-alcohol voices and no one else.

All of this crucial context is missing from the Vox article, which mostly uncritically repeats the claims being made by Martinez and the other activists who are now frustrated that their attempt to influence the government's dietary guidelines has been thwarted.

One final thing worth noting: One of the few quotes in the Vox article that does not come from a coauthor of the supposedly buried report is attributed to Mike Marshall, CEO of the Alcohol Policy Alliance, which advocates for policies to reduce drinking. Marshall blames the alcohol industry for the Trump administration's decision not to publish the final version of the report. "Like the tobacco industry, like the opioid industry, they are working hard to prevent the American people from gaining the knowledge that they need to make the best decisions for themselves," he told Vox.

The alcohol industry is obviously a self-interested party in all of this. However, Marshall appears to be the one pulling the strings on this misleading media campaign. In an email to supporters of the Alcohol Policy Alliance in August, Marshall bragged about how the organization was "preparing national journalists for the October release of the Dietary Guidelines" and "reframing coverage" of the debate over drinking.

That seems to be the exact goal of the Vox article, which succeeds at "reframing" the debate by leaving out context and inconvenient facts—like the fact that the project director for the ICCPUD report was Alicia Sparks, a former chairwoman for the Alcohol Policy Alliance. That seems pretty relevant, no? But there was apparently no space to inform readers of that fact alongside Marshall's accusation that his policy opponents are engaged in shady behavior.

Given all the conflicts of interest and obvious bias in the ICCPUD report, it makes perfect sense that the Trump administration would sideline it as the new dietary guidelines are drawn up. Whether the final report is ever published or not, the unavoidable conclusion here is that it is the anti-alcohol activists themselves who have largely discredited their own efforts.