Good news for drinkers: The Trump administration has removed alcohol intake guidelines

The Trump administration recently updated US dietary guidelines for Americans which turned the food pyramid upside down and dropped previous limits on alcohol consumption. For the past 35 years, the advice from the federal health authorities had been that women should consume no more than one drink per day and men no more than two for moderate drinking.

With the exception of pregnant women, people recovering from addiction, those who are unable to control how much they drink and individuals taking medications that shouldn’t be mixed with alcohol, all of whom should not consume alcohol, the new guidelines merely state that Americans should “consume less alcohol for better health.”

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, defended the move saying that “there was never really good data to support” the previous recommendation.

Research shows that alcohol consumption increases health risks

Advocates and health experts would beg to differ with Dr. Oz’s statement. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in 2023 that “the risks and harms associated with drinking alcohol have been systematically evaluated over the years and are well documented.”

“Alcohol is a toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance and has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago – this is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco,” stated the WHO. “Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer, including the most common cancer types, such as bowel cancer and female breast cancer.”

Even the government’s own research states the contrary. A draft version of a report by the Alcohol Intake & Health Study published in January 2025 said that “among the US population, the negative health effects of drinking alcohol start at low levels of consumption and begin to increase sharply the more a person drinks.”

It found that for a man that consumes one drink per day, the risk of dying from any alcohol-related cause was about one in 1,000. That jumped to one in 25 with two drinks per day.

Officials said that those findings would be taken into consideration when drawing up the new guidelines. A final version of the report has never been released.

What constitutes a drink?

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), “in the United States, a ‘standard drink’ (also known as an alcoholic drink equivalent) is defined as any beverage containing 0.6 fluid ounces or 14 grams of pure alcohol.”

Depending on the type of alcoholic beverage and the amount that each contains, the amount that can be consumed which equates to a standard drink varies as follows:

• Regular beer (5%): 12 fl oz
• Wine (12%): 5 fl oz
• Liquor (40%): 1.5 fl oz

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