The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), a part of the National Institutes of Health, is re-evaluating its alcohol intake recommendations for the American public. NIAAA Director and “alcohol czar” Dr. George F. Koob revealed that the organization is taking inspiration from Canadian policies, warning that Americans may be advised to limit themselves to just two beers per week as soon as 2025.
In a statement made to the Daily Mail on Thursday, Dr. Koob—who himself enjoys several glasses of “buttery Californian Chardonnay” per week—said that the NIAAA is paying close attention to Canada’s “big experiment” with its two-drink recommendation.
Current NIAAA guidelines in the United States advise men to have two bottles of beer, glasses of wine, or shots of liquor per day, while women are advised to have one. Heavy drinking is defined as four drinks per day or 14 per week for men and three per day or seven per week for women. However, these guidelines are up for review in 2025, and Dr. Koob indicates a high likelihood of the numbers being revised.
“I mean, they’re not going to go up, I’m pretty sure,” he told the Daily Mail. “So, if [alcohol consumption guidelines] go in any direction, it would be toward Canada. If there’s health benefits, I think people will start to re-evaluate where we’re at.”
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Dr. Koob continued by discussing the variety of recent studies showing absolutely no health benefits to alcohol consumption. “Most of the benefits people attribute to alcohol, we feel they really have more to do with what someone’s eating rather than what they’re drinking,” he stated. “So it really has to do with the Mediterranean diet, socio-economic status, that makes you able to afford that kind of diet and make your own fresh food and so forth. With this in mind, most of the benefits kind of disappear on the health side.”
While these health guidelines would not constitute legal restrictions or limit consumers’ ability to purchase alcohol, many have complained that the revision would constitute a government overreach in the same vein as the efforts to ban gas stoves and coal-fired pizza ovens. Amanda Berger, President of Science and Health for the Distilled Spirits Council, a trade association representing liquor and spirits manufacturers, called Dr. Koob’s statements “alarming and inappropriate.”
Dr. George Koob’s comments calling for a drastic change to the federal recommendations on alcohol before the review of alcohol research has even begun undermines the scientific rigor and objectivity of the entire Dietary Guidelines process. For more than 30 years, the federal guidance on alcohol consumption has been no more than one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men for those who choose to drink. It is extremely alarming and inappropriate for a federal official to predetermine the outcome of the Dietary Guidelines and suggest changing decades of precedent without the benefit of the scientific review to support such a sweeping move.
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