Inside the Alcohol Lobby’s Quest to Water Down Federal Booze Guidelines

The alcohol industry spent the end of 2025 facing down a potential apocalypse. Booze lobbyists swooped in to help.

The beer, wine and liquor industry — reeling from declining sales — has long had to reckon with U.S. government recommendations that warned against alcohol consumption, suggesting adults who drink any alcohol at all “drink in moderation” and limit their intake to “two drinks or less in a day for men and one drink or less in a day for women.” A revision to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which was due at the start of 2026, could have proven disastrous if it came in even marginally more restrictive.

The government’s new advice is relatively vague, urging adults to “consume less alcohol for better overall health” and “limit” their drinking. It hangs no specific number of drinks on that recommendation. The guidelines also removed longstanding warnings that drinking could increase the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease and other maladies, and they don’t distinguish between men and women, who typically metabolize alcohol differently.

Booze lobbyists, who blitzed Capitol Hill, the White House and key executive branch agencies in the months leading up to the guidelines revision, may be partially to thank.

In all, at least 15 beer, wine and liquor industry companies and trade associations reported lobbying on dietary guidelines in some form or fashion between July 1 and Sept. 30, according to a NOTUS review of federal records. (Lobbyists will disclose next week their federal lobbying activity covering Oct. 1 through Dec. 31.)

Two lobbyists who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe their advocacy on behalf of alcohol industry clients said they made the case to Trump administration officials that more generalized alcohol recommendations would align with “make America healthy again” principles of individual choice and health empowerment. They also argued it could help the nation’s domestic beer, wine and liquor manufacturers thrive.

From Molson Coors and Heineken to the Wine Institute and the Beer Institute, pressure to keep the nation’s dietary guidelines alcohol friendly — or at least alcohol neutral — kept coming in the form of professional lobbying efforts.

As summer 2025 turned to fall, Anheuser-Busch InBev spent $1.32 million — up from $1.2 million during the same period the year before — on a variety of priorities, including “issues related to seeking transparency around dietary guidelines review and revision process,” according to federal lobbying records.

The Beer Institute spent $710,000 during last year’s third quarter — up from $540,000 the year before — including pressing the government on “issues related to dietary guidelines,” lobbying records indicate.

Michael Kaiser, executive vice president and director of government affairs at WineAmerica, told NOTUS that the group “did not lobby or advocate for any changes to the guidelines.”

The vague disclosure of lobbying on the dietary guidelines does not give much of a window into what these groups specifically lobbied on. Some alcohol industry groups denied lobbying to water down the guidance.

Amanda Berger, senior vice president of science and research at the Distilled Spirits Council, told NOTUS that the liquor-focused trade association “has long supported the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and has never advocated for an elimination of the drink limit definition of moderate drinking.”

“There are some misconceptions about what the new guidelines say or don’t say in large part because you have to go to the supplementary scientific documents to get the full picture. So, part of what we are focused on is making sure that we’re continuing to do what we can to educate people that this is still the definition of moderation,” Berger said.

The National Beer Wholesalers Association, American Beverage Licensees and WineAmerica pointed NOTUS to a statement cosigned by nearly two-dozen alcohol industry trade groups — a statement now quoted by the White House — that are part of the Science Over Bias coalition of trade groups associated with the beer, wine and liquor industry. The coalition has been calling for a more transparent dietary guideline creation process and sought to combat the influence of “anti-alcohol activist researchers.”

“The Dietary Guidelines’ longstanding, overarching advice is that if alcohol is consumed, it should be done in moderation. These updated guidelines, underpinned by the preponderance of scientific evidence, reaffirm this important guidance,” the statement reads.

The new, truncated guidelines themselves are just nine pages, while the 2020-2025 edition was 130 pages plus appendices. While the scientific foundation for the latest dietary guidelines said that alcohol consumption guidelines are based on a study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which defines moderate drinking as one drink per day for women or two for men, that’s not clear in the consumer-facing document itself.

Berger told NOTUS that “there is a little bit of a misperception that the guidelines have changed, when in fact, they really haven’t.”

Lobbyists for Heineken, Molson Coors, Anheuser-Busch, the Beer Institute, the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America, Wine Institute, Diageo North America and The President’s Forum of the Distilled Spirits Industry did not respond to requests for comment.

President Donald Trump is an avowed teetotaler. He personally maintains a financial interest in the beer, wine and liquor industry.

As a real estate mogul, with hotels, resorts and golf courses bearing his name, Trump had no reservations about keeping the alcohol-fueled good times rolling, such as at the Trump International Hotel in Washington during his first term, where the least expensive barside cocktail cost $24.

Trump is also directly part of the booze industry: The Trump Organization’s winery in Virginia is the state’s largest. And Trump vodka is back on the market after a long hiatus.

“President Trump campaigned on a promise to make America healthy again,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told NOTUS. “Any notion that the Trump administration’s MAHA Agenda, which is a key presidential priority, is influenced by anything other than gold standard science and the well-being of the American people is either ignorant or intentionally misleading.”

During a news briefing last week, Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, described alcohol as “a social lubricant that brings people together.”

While Oz said he does not think anyone should drink alcohol, he added that it gives people “an excuse to bond and socialize, and there’s probably nothing healthier than having a good time with friends in a safe way.”

He also said “there was never really good data to support” previous guidance advising no more than two drinks a day for men and one drink for women.

The guidance is an abrupt about-face from a year ago, when former President Joe Biden’s Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress to add cancer warning labels to alcoholic beverages, a longshot goal that cited studies linking alcohol consumption to diseases, including breast cancer.

As of Thursday, not every part of the Trump administration has revised its alcohol guidelines to align with the USDA’s recommendations.

The Centers for Disease Control, for one, still cites the old guidelines on its “alcohol and cancer” page, which notes that “some studies show that drinking three or more drinks that contain alcohol per day increases the risk of stomach and pancreatic cancers.”