The growing body of research on the negative health effects of alcohol was notably absent from a key White House public health report on chronic disease published this week, drawing criticism from critics of drinking and raising anticipation for the federal guidelines on alcohol consumption later this year.
The Make America Healthy Again Commission report on youth chronic disease, published Thursday, did not include alcohol in its laundry list of dietary options, lifestyle choices, and environmental exposures contributing to the rise of adverse neurodevelopmental, autoimmune, and mental health conditions in children and adolescents.
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The commission’s work, mandated by President Donald Trump in a February executive order, is likely to affect an array of policies across multiple departments and agencies. In particular, it will have a sizable effect on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which shape all federal nutrition programs.
Mike Marshall, CEO of the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance, told the Washington Examiner that he was disappointed but not surprised that alcohol was not mentioned in the MAHA Commission report.
“If you’re trying to look at chronic health conditions, you have to look at the underlying environment in which those conditions are either being created or being managed,” said Marshall, adding that excessive alcohol consumption is “one of the biggest issues in the country that nobody wants to talk about.”
Alcohol and youth health
Alcohol’s role in health problems has come under intense scrutiny in recent years as a growing body of research has linked excessive alcohol consumption to seven different types of cancer, as well as cardiovascular, liver, and kidney disease.
A new study published this week found that alcohol-associated cancer deaths have doubled in the United States since 1990. All alcohol-associated deaths increased from less than 12,000 annually in 1990 to more than 23,000 in 2021.
Alcohol is also known to exacerbate anxiety, depression, and other adverse mental health conditions, which the MAHA Commission report also highlighted as a critical problem for America’s youth.
The report cited 2023 statistics from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that teenage depression rates doubled between 2009 and 2019, with one in four teenage girls in 2022 reporting a major depressive episode within the past year.
Although alcohol was not included in the MAHA Commission report, youth between the ages of 12 and 20 consume approximately 3% of all alcohol in the U.S., according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
About 15% of underage adolescents, about 11 million under age 21, reported drinking within the past month. Roughly 3.3 million youth between 12 and 20 reported binge drinking, defined as consuming five or more drinks at a time, within the past month.
Teenage alcohol consumption, particularly binge drinking, can alter brain development, including cognitive function, and can triple a teenager’s risk of developing alcohol use disorder in adulthood. But researchers have also raised the possibility that a parent’s alcohol use even before conception of a child could affect their child’s risk of developing chronic conditions later in life.
Recent research suggests that paternal alcohol consumption up to a year before conception can put a child at a higher risk of all-cause mortality. Maternal alcohol consumption before conception has also been shown to contribute to low birthweight in mouse experiments, suggesting the need for further research.
When asked why the negative effects of alcohol were not referenced in the MAHA Commission report for further study, White House spokesman Kush Desai said that the health risks of alcohol are “well documented and well publicized.”
“Current health guidance already advise minimal alcohol and zero tobacco use for adults, while federal and state laws broadly prohibit the purchase and consumption of tobacco and alcohol by children,” said Desai.
Politics of Alcohol
The commission’s silence on alcohol’s role in youth health has Marshall and others concerned that the DGA, produced every five years by the Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture, will have slim recommendations on alcohol consumption.
Republicans in Congress voiced strong opposition in January when former President Joe Biden’s Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, called for warning labels about alcohol’s carcinogenic properties to be included on all alcohol products. Murthy’s report largely relied upon the World Health Organization’s classification of alcohol as a carcinogen.
Since the Trump administration’s takeover and the shift towards MAHA priorities, there has been much speculation about how HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will direct the alcohol consumption recommendations in the DGA.
Kennedy has said that the DGA for 2025, which by law must be promulgated by the end of the year, will only be a four-page document so that it is easy to digest for citizens and health professionals alike. This is a drastic shift from the multi-hundred-page documents produced in prior administrations.
“Statutorily, they have to speak to alcohol in the guidelines, and so there’s going to have to be a paragraph or two,” said Marshall. “What I don’t know is, will the alcohol industry prevail in framing that paragraph or two because they are so scared of the dietary guidelines calling out the link to cancer?”
ALCOHOL TO BE EPICENTER OF PUBLIC HEALTH BATTLE IN 2025
Andrew Langer, a regulatory policy expert with the Conservative Political Action Conference, told the Washington Examiner that he hopes the commission’s report was silent on alcohol because of the need to resist what he says is the development of “an international temperance movement” across the globe.
“This is part of the tightrope that our political appointees are walking,” said Langer. “There’s a push towards the MAHA initiative, which is looking at root causes, but there’s also the push to make sure that we’re not simply adopting some sort of international guidance without some kind of thorough scientific review.”