Recent reporting has revealed that some U.S. Congress members are pushing to halt a federal health study on alcohol’s harmful effects, raising concerns about alcohol industry interference. This alcohol industry interference undermines independent research on alcohol’s health risks, especially ahead of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines. The lawmakers’ actions mirror the industry’s long history of downplaying alcohol’s dangers, drawing comparisons to the tobacco industry’s misinformation strategies. This controversy raises broader questions about public health policy and the influence of corporate lobbying.

Some lawmakers are doing the dirty work for Big Alcohol

Recent reporting by Politico has revealed U.S. Congress members’ efforts to halt a federal health study on alcohol’s impacts, sparking concerns about alcohol industry interference.

Ca. 100 lawmakers, led by Reps. Brad Finstad (R-Minn.) and Jim Costa (D-Calif.), have called on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to suspend its alcohol harm research.

These lawmakers are doing the dirty work for alcohol industry lobby groups Distilled Spirits Council and Wine Institute. They are parroting alcohol industry talking points, claiming the indpendent research duplicated an existing study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).

These members of Congress are clearly intervening to protect the interests of the alcohol industry, whether intentionally or not.

Dr. Michael Siegel

It is another example of the alcohol industry being afraid of independent scientific findings that show the health harms linked to their products – which could lead to improved U.S. guidelines for low-risk alcohol consumption.

Critics of the group of lawmakers express concern. Such a move to clearly champion alcohol industry interests instead of public interests in understanding the full extent of alcohol’s health risks could undermine science on alcohol harms, especially as the 2025 Dietary Guidelines approach, with growing evidence linking alcohol consumption to increased cancer risk and other health problems​, such as cardiovascular disease, mental ill-health, injuries, and violence.

This issue raises questions about the balance between public health interests and alcohol industry lobbying in shaping policy and public awareness of the health risks inherent in alcohol products.

Deception: Alcohol industry is misleading the public about the risks and harms of their products

In more than 10 resource articles, Movendi International has so far chronicled how Big Alcohol front groups are deceiving the public and politicians about the harms caused by their own products and practices.

Research shows consistently that alcohol companies and their front groups are misleading the public about the risks and harms of their products and practices.

For example, in 2018 a $100 million clinical trial on how ‘moderate’ alcohol use would ‘benefit’ health was cancelled in the US because it was biased towards producing findings that small amounts of alcohol have health benefits. The trial was paid for by both the alcohol industry and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the self-described largest funder of alcohol research globally.

Another example is that alcohol conferences funded by the alcohol industry promoted industry-favorable framings of harms and solutions. These conferences are aimed at professionals outside of the industry, including researchers and policymakers, with several offering professional credits for attendance.

In a 2022 study, researchers showed that conflicts of interest in alcohol research are systemic problems requiring collective solutions.

The Congress controversy unpacked

In July, 25 members of Congress wrote a letter to the director of the NIAAA claiming it was inappropriate for ICCPUD to study the health effects of alcohol use, that this was duplicative of the work by NASEM, and questioning the appointment of four specific researchers to serve on a scientific review subcommittee to inform ICCPUD’s consideration of the scientific issues around alcohol consumption and health.

The letter asserts that the ICCPUD is not an appropriate body to be reviewing the health effects of alcohol

The controversy surrounding U.S. Congress interference with scientific research into alcohol harms involves efforts to challenge the integrity of experts selected to study the health harms of alcohol, according to analysis by Dr. Michael Siegel.

In his analysis Dr. Siegel writes that several members of the U.S. Congress have raised concerns about the involvement of scientists like Dr. Tim Naimi and Dr. Kenneth Shield, arguing that their previous positions on alcohol-related issues present a conflict of interest. But this claim has been criticized as unfounded, with experts pointing out that having published work in the field is not the same as having financial conflicts of interest, which is the actual ethical concern in scientific research.

The broader issue is that certain members of Congress appear to be protecting the alcohol industry’s interests by undermining researchers whose work increases the understanding of alcohol’s health impacts. At the same time, these lawmakers have ignored conflicts of interest tied to industry-funded researchers. For instance, Dr. Luc Djousse, who has been connected to funding from the alcohol industry, has been appointed to an advisory panel, raising concerns about bias in favor of the alcohol industry. These moves threaten to skew scientific inquiry and undermine public health initiatives​, according to analysis by Dr. Siegel.

This interference has led to formal complaints, highlighting how such actions could erode the credibility of scientific research and enable industry influence to compromise public health recommendations.

Track record of deception: How DISCUS has interfered before in guidelines development before

In more than ten resources articles, Movendi International has curated a detailed profile about how DISCUS deceives the public about the harms caused by the products of alcohol companies that fund DISCUS and how the Big Alcohol front group interferes against alcohol policy making in the public interest.

The alcohol industry, including DISCUS, has been exposed for engaging in the extensive misrepresentation of evidence about the cancer risk of alcohol. These activities have parallels with those of the tobacco industry. This finding is important because the industry is involved in developing alcohol policy in many countries, and in disseminating health information to the public, including schoolchildren. Policymakers, academics, public health and other practitioners should reconsider the appropriateness of their relationships to these alcohol industry bodies, according to the scientists.

Already in 2016, Maik Dünnbier exposed in an analysis how alcohol industry front groups, including DISCUS, were interfering against low-risk alcohol consumption guidelines in both the U.S. and the UK.

Over the years, DISCUS has attempted to water down and derail the development of guidelines in the United States. In 2016, as Mr Dünnbier chronicled, and again in 2020, when the Dietary Guidelines Advisory (DGA) Committee of the United States was making progress towards a more evidence-based approach to the alcohol-related guidelines.

DISCUS has been exposed for misrepresenting the content of the existing guidelines:

In 2015/16, they published a news release with a false and misleading quote, claiming alcohol “in moderation” could “help individuals achieve healthy eating patterns”. This was a deliberate misinterpretation of the actual wording of the dietary guidelines.

In 2015, DISCUS spent more than $4 million, leading the alcohol industry in the United States, on lobbying – according to OpenSecrets, in their attempt to water down the wording on alcohol and hinder health groups’ efforts to actually improve the dietary guidelines based on scientific evidence, for example to include a message that alcohol use is not healthy and that is causes cancer.

$4 Million
DISCUS lobbying against evidence-based health advise on alcohol
DISCUS spent more than $4 million, leading the alcohol industry in the United States, on lobbying in 2015.



Background to the unfolding controversy

In 2004, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services created an interagency committee to direct federal efforts to reduce underage alcohol use. The committee is called the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD). It is led by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and includes agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Surgeon General, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

The ICCPUD recently decided to undertake a study, which it calls the Alcohol Intake and Health Study, to review the scientific evidence on the health effects of alcohol. In part, this study is intended to inform the upcoming development of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines.

After the ICCPUD had begun its review process, the alcohol industry successfully lobbied Congress to fund another study, this one to be conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), to also review the health effects of alcohol consumption with an eye towards informing the 2025 Dietary Guidelines.

This means Big Alcohol lobbied to create a parallel process, competing with ICCPUD, and now Big Alcohol lobbyists are claiming the ICCPUD research would duplicate the NASEM study.

By suggesting that NASEM was the only body that should conduct this review, the lawmakers are clearly introducing a massive conflict of interest into the whole process.

For many years, the alcohol industry in the United States has been afraid of improved dietary guidelines and lowered guidelines for what low-risk alcohol use is.

Other countries and world regions, that protect against alcohol industry interference and conflicts of interest, have been able to develop evidence-based dietary guidelines or low-risk alcohol use guidelines.

For example, the Nordic and Mexican dietary guidelines reviewed the evidence based an adjusted their recommendations. Also the recently released cancer code for Latin America and the Caribbean recommends reducing, quitting, or avoiding alcohol consumption to reduce the cancer risk.

As Dr. Siegel explains, the NASEM study was tainted by alcohol industry interference from the start. NASEM selected two researchers with severe conflicts of interest with the alcohol industry to be on its review panel. These two alcohol industry-funded researchers (Dr. Kenneth Mukamal and Dr. Eric Timm) were principal investigators in a research grant funded by the alcohol industry, to the tune of $67 million, which promised in advance to produce findings showing that moderate alcohol consumption is good for one’s health. It was revealed that the principal investigator actually courted the alcohol industry funding by essentially promising Big Alcohol positive results (meaning a positive overall effect of moderate drinking on health). 

After the New York Times broke the story, NASEM backtracked and removed the two conflicted researchers from the panel. However, one of the scientists they chose as a replacement (Dr. Luc Djousse) was another conflicted researcher with a history of alcohol industry funding. This scandal, too, was broken by Roni Rabin, but this time NASEM did not relent.

Clearly, NASEM is under the influence of Big Alcohol.

And clearly and unfortunately, some U.S. Congress members are doing the work to undermine independent science and scientists on behalf of the alcohol industry.

This letter is an absolutely inappropriate intrusion into the scientific workings of the federal public health agencies that are entrusted with protecting the nation’s health.”

Dr. Michael Siegel

Setting the record straight

Dr. Siegel writes that the letter was an absolutely inappropriate intrusion into the scientific workings of federal public health agencies: CDC, NIH, DHHS, NIAAA, NIDA, and SAMHSA. These agencies were mandated with protecting the nation’s health. Congress has no business interfering with research being conducted by the National Institutes of Health, with the sole exception of impropriety in the research, such as undue financial influence by corporate interests or research misconduct. 

But in this case, the opposite is occurring, as Dr. Siegel reveals. Some lawmakers were intervening to protect the interests of the alcohol industry.

Dr. Siegel makes the case for the Inspector General of the House of Representatives to conduct an investigation to determine whether the alcohol industry played any role “in this unseemly and political encroachment on the ability of the NIH to conduct independent and unbiased research” because there was enough evidence of wrongdoing in the degree of alcohol industry influence on the 2025 Dietary Guidelines. He has submitted his analysis as a formal complaint to the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. House of Representatives.


Source Website: Politico