Another Paper Finds Lighter Drinkers Have Lower Risk of Death Than Abstainers

Less than a week after we reported on actual research into death rates associated with drinking, The Washington Post reported on a paper published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol & Drugs that estimated mortality.

You'll recognize the difference in our terminology. Last week we reported on research. This week The Washington Post reported on a paper. What's the difference?

Quite a bit, actually. Last week's study by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine involved real people – 26,694 of them – and began in 2004-2007. Their mean age when the study began was 64.4 years; 42% were male, 42% non-Hispanic Black. The research lasted an average of 13.3 years.

The paper the Post reported on produced an estimate using a "cause-specific modeling approach that combined exposure data from national health surveys, relative risk, population data from the U.S. Census Bureau, mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, and morbidity data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation." It also involved a review of a number of other studies.

One produced hard data. The other produced an estimate. That's not to say estimates can't have merit, but they are subject to the quality of the data fed into them. In a word, "garbage in, garbage out."

So, what did they conclude? The Weill Cornell research report found that someone who has less than three drinks a week is less likely to die from cancer than someone who abstains. But it also found that, compared to abstainers, heavy drinkers – women who consumed more than eight drinks a week and men who had more than 15 – had an increased risk of cancer mortality.

The Journal's estimate sought to measure all-cause mortality attributable to alcohol. "There were small protective associations at up to three drinks a week," it conceded but dismisses these as being "not statistically significant.

"Males who consumed more than 6.5 drinks per week exhibited a lifetime alcohol-attributable mortality of (greater than) 1 in 1,000, whereas females reached this same threshold at 7 drinks per week," it continues. The mortality risk for both sexes jumped to 1 in 100 when weekly consumption exceeded 14 drinks per 8.5 drinks. And when men had 14 drinks, the risk was 4%.

So, in a broad sense, both papers agree on two key points: the risk from drinking 2 or 3 drinks a week is less than that of abstaining. And the risk of drinking more 14 drinks is significantly elevated. As for those in the middle, the Weill Cornell research found no association with cancer mortality, where the Journal paper found some risk.

Drinking Patterns and Risk

The Journal paper had an interestingboth ischemic review of what other papers had reported on the impact of drink patterns on disease risk:

• Women who reported binge drinking in the past year had a higher risk of breast cancer than those who didn't binge.
• With regard to cardiovascular disease, "heavy episodic drinking may reverse or offset the protective associations often observed with moderate alcohol consumption." (This appears to concede moderate consumption has a protective effect.)
• High-intensity short-term drinking sessions "markedly increase shorr-term cardiovascular risk, including myrocardial infarction and both ischemic short-term and hemorrhagic stroke, along with elevated risk both the following day and over the following week."

In broad terms, both papers agree, even if the Journal paper grudgingly concedes that low (less than three drinks a week) consumption appears safer than no consumption. And they both agreed that high consumption, right around eight drinks for women, 14 for men, carries an increased risk of mortality

The Post Writes for Its Audience

Washington is a company town, and by and large people in the Washington area hate President Trump. Unfortunately, The Post let what I consider a biased lead paragraph get published:

"A federally commissioned study that researchers say was sidelined as the Trump administration revised U.S. dietary guidelines published Tuesday, recommending that Americans limit themselves to no more than one drink a day."

Let me put on my newswriting professor hat and simply say the news was in the last phrase – "Americans (should) limit themselves to no more than one drink a day." That should have been the lead of the story. If the post wanted to rehash old news it should have been at the end of the story.

Instead, the fourth, fifth, and sixth paragraphs are devoted to rehashing the Trump Administration's decision not to include the recommendations of the Interagency Coordinating Committee on Preventing Underage Drinking (ICCPUD) report, from which the Journal's article was derived. In fact, of the 27 paragraphs in the Post's story, nine are devoted to rehashing the controversy over the ICCPUD study.

In an editorial accompanying the study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Robert Vincent, former associate administrator for alcohol prevention and treatment policy at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, opens with a whine:

"I never expected that doing my job—carefully, transparently, and in accordance with federal law—would end my federal service. Yet that is precisely what happened.

"After nearly four decades as a public servant, I was separated from federal employment as part of a targeted reduction in force that dismantled much of the federal infrastructure for alcohol prevention and treatment policy," he goes on. "Career scientists, analysts, and policy professionals were similarly removed or reassigned. The timing and scope of that reduction in force mattered. It followed sustained opposition to a federally authorized scientific effort that produced evidence at odds with powerful commercial interests

What Vincent, who from 2021-2025 oversaw the Interagency Coordinating Committee on Preventing Underage Drinking (ICCPUD), doesn't acknowledge in the editorial is that in doing the study ICCPUD went far beyond its statutory mandate and was duplicating work that Congress had specifically assigned to the National Institutes for Science, Medicine & Engineering.

Vincent says the ICCPUD study was requested by "senior federal officials" but doesn't name them. We suspect he was one of the officials and perhaps the prime instigator. He also ignores the fact that numerous leading members of Congress wrote the Agriculture and HHS Secretaries calling for the ICCPUD study to be halted specifically because it was duplicating the NASEM study..

Vincent then goes into a discussion of a "profound" treatment gap for adolescents with alcohol and drug use disorders but seems not to recognize that by funding the ICCPUD study, he may have been diverting money from study and prevention.