Former U.S. health official explains why the Trump administration ‘ignored’ a key alcohol study

Former U.S. health official explains why the Trump administration ‘ignored’ a key alcohol study

A study finding that even one drink a day causes health risks was deliberately sidelined by the Trump administration, a former federal public health official alleges

Just one alcoholic drink a day is enough to raise a person’s risk of premature death—that’s the major takeaway of a study published this week in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs . The research was commissioned during the Biden administration to help inform the U.S. Dietary Guidelines; the Trump administration did not include the study’s findings in the latest update to the guidelines, released in January.

Instead the guidelines recommend that Americans drink less. That loose recommendation is not backed up by science, says Robert Vincent, a former federal public health analyst who helped get the new study off the ground. Instead, the study suggests that no amount of alcohol appears to be safe, he says.

Vincent was fired from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) after nearly two decades in April 2025, in a wave of cuts to federal employees made by the Elon Musk–led Department of Government Efficiency. At SAMHSA, he served as associate administrator for prevention and treatment policy and staff chair for the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD).

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In an editorial accompanying the new study, Vincent alleged that the Trump administration deliberately omitted the research from the new guidelines, favoring instead studies such as one from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) in 2024 that found that moderate drinking was linked to reduced risk of all-cause mortality .

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) press secretary Emily G. Hilliard said in a statement that “Any characterization that the study was sidelined is inaccurate. 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. Ultimately, the Dietary Guidelines were based on the best available scientific research. One thing is clear: the evidence on alcohol and health has been remarkably consistent over time.”