In an exclusive report from VOX, it was revealed that President Donald Trump's administration buried a study that detailed the impact alcohol has on cancer.
Reporter Dylan Scott noted that the alcohol industry is working to ensure "most Americans still don’t know that alcohol can cause cancer." Now, however, a major analysis has evidence that there is a "link between drinking alcohol and getting sick and dying from various causes, including cancer."
President Joe Biden's administration commissioned the Alcohol Intake and Health Study in 2022, but the group was told in August that the Trump administration wouldn't publish the final report.
“The thing that the alcohol industry fears more than increased taxes is increased knowledge about the risks associated with drinking alcohol, particularly around cancer,” said Mike Marshall, who is the CEO of the Alcohol Policy Alliance. “Like the tobacco industry, like the opioid industry, they are working hard to prevent the American people from gaining the knowledge that they need to make the best decisions for themselves.”
It's unexpected, given that Trump's brother, Fred Trump Jr., died of complications related to alcoholism in 1981.
“I guess you could say now I’m the chief of trying to solve it,” Trump told The Washington Post six years ago when talking about fixing the opioid epidemic. “I don’t know that I’d be working, devoting the kind of time and energy and even the money we are allocating to (the opioid crisis) … I don’t know that I’d be doing that had I not had the experience with Fred.”
Trump, who doesn't drink alcohol, has cited his brother’s addiction in the past when he advocates for stricter drug enforcement and awareness.
“He was so handsome," Trump said of his brother, "and I saw what alcohol did to him even physically … and that had an impact on me, too."
Yet, when given the opportunity to address the health impacts, the administration even went so far as to change dietary guidelines to eliminate any specific recommended limits on alcohol consumption. The Biden administration previously intended to use the study to make educated, fact-based and studied guidelines.
"I was hopeful. … Look at all this evidence we have,” said one of the co-authors, Priscilla Martinez, who serves as the deputy scientific director of the Alcohol Research Group at the Public Health Institute. “This is when the change is going to happen.”
Other than Trump's own history of alcoholism in his family, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has advocated eliminating toxins and any corruption from corporate special interests. Kennedy has also been in recovery for decades after his own addiction struggles, doesn't appear to consider "reducing alcohol consumption a priority," wrote Scott.
