As Trump admin kills booze-cancer study, trade groups' pro-science stance fades

In January, federal researchers released a draft version of a report that contained explosive claims about the relationship between moderate drinking and cancer. Last week, Vox and The New York Times made explosive claims of their own: that members of the Trump administration had intervened to suppress the final version of the report for unspecified reasons, preventing its use in this year’s contentious update of federal drinking guidance.

This situation is hardly “transparent and free from bias,” especially considering the president’s vast and lucrative financial interests in maintaining a thriving beverage-alcohol trade, and the anti-science bent of the “Make America Healthy Again” crusade with which he’s allied himself. But after demanding the federal public-health body behind the shelved study meet that important benchmark, the industry’s largest trade groups aren’t even pretending to hold the Trump administration to the same standard. To the extent they’re speaking out about the study at all, it’s to celebrate that it was spiked.

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