Criticism is rife over contentious federal study that finds 'any alcohol use' can cause cancer

Even "low levels" of alcohol consumption can cause cancer and are associated with a higher risk of death, a controversial federal study intended to be a basis of a 2025 revision of U.S. Dietary Guidelines has found.

U.S. Rep Mike Thompson (D-Napa)

A recent story by Esther Mobley and Jess Lander in the San Francisco Chronicle online indicates that U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Napa) warned last week of his concern "that the agencies in charge of researching and producing our updated dietary guidelines created a new, less transparent review process to issue alcohol consumption guidance to Americans."

His comments were in regard to the study, published by the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD), that has drawn significant amounts of criticism.

Since 1980, the Chronicle article says, federal dietary guidelines "have stated that one drink a day is safe for women, and two drinks a day is safe for men."

But the ICCPUD findings sharply contrast with those from another report, published in December 2024 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) that found "moderate drinkers have a lower risk of death than nondrinkers," the piece adds.

According to the Mobley-Lander story, NASEM had concluded that "moderate drinking is linked to lower rates of cardiovascular disease, and with as higher risk of breast cancer, but not other cancers."

The new 81-page document claims, meanwhile, that "the risk of dying from alcohol use begins at low levels of average use [while] higher levels of alcohol consumption are linked with progressively higher mortality risk" — a tenfold increase, in fact.

Who to believe?

Tiffany Hall, board chair of the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance, charged Wednesday that "the ICCPUD report highlights the critical need to reduce alcohol harms by properly informing the public of the health risks of consuming alcohol. The fact that any amount of alcohol is harmful to your health can no longer be ignored."

Widespread speculation exists that new guidelines might echo the World Health Organization's 2022 declaration that "there is no safe level of alcohol consumption."

Information on other reports of health risks can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.  

Three more books of mine are MysteryDates®, a look at how you can keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, an anthology of 70 newspaper columns I wrote; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical children's fantasy about a sorcerer and two fairies that I co-authored with my then 8-year-old granddaughter. Details can be found at https://woodyweingarten.com/.