Scientists urge one-drink-a-day limit for U.S. adults

An international team of scientists says U.S. adults should keep alcohol use to no more than one drink a day. The recommendation matters because the researchers found rising lifetime risks of death from alcohol-related disease or injury at levels near or above that amount.

The paper, published Tuesday in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, is not federal policy. It offers a more specific limit than the current U.S. dietary guidelines, which advise Americans to “consume less alcohol for better overall health,” according to the latest version released in January.

Earlier U.S. dietary guidelines set a daily cap of two drinks for men and one for women. Priscilla Martinez-Matyszczyk, a co-author of the new paper and deputy scientific director of the Alcohol Research Group at the Public Health Institute in California, said the current “less is best” message is accurate but too broad to help people judge their own drinking.

Martinez-Matyszczyk was part of a group of American, Canadian and British scientists asked in 2022 to review alcohol research for the federal dietary guidelines process, which is run by the Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments and updated every five years. The Biden administration released that group’s report in January 2025, but its findings were set aside under the Trump administration, according to an editorial published with the new study by Robert Vincent, a former associate administrator at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said the guidelines are based on “the totality of the scientific record, not any single report or analysis.”

For the new study, the scientists reviewed 56 systematic reviews on alcohol and health, then applied those findings to U.S. mortality data. They found that men who drank more than 6.5 drinks a week and women who drank more than seven drinks a week faced a lifetime risk greater than 1 in 1,000 of dying from alcohol-related disease or injury.

The researchers found higher risks at greater levels of drinking. For both men and women, more than 8.5 drinks a week was linked to a lifetime risk above 1 in 100. At 14 drinks a week, the lifetime risk rose to 1 in 25, according to the paper.

Jürgen Rehm, a co-author and senior scientist at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health at the University of Toronto, called a 1-in-25 risk “very high.”

The study linked one drink a day with higher risk of death from liver cirrhosis, injuries and several cancers compared with people who do not drink. The cancers cited were oral, pharyngeal, laryngeal, esophageal, colon and liver cancers in men and women, as well as breast cancer in women.

The researchers also found a lower risk of death from ischemic stroke and ischemic heart disease among daily drinkers, but said that benefit is wiped out by occasional binge drinking. Martinez-Matyszczyk said the overall harms from injuries, cancers and other diseases outweigh any heart-related benefit.

Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University psychiatry professor who was not involved in the research, said the findings push back against the idea that moderate drinking improves health. He said many people still believe they live longer if they drink one or two drinks a day.

The American Cancer Society recommends that people who drink limit intake to one drink a day for women and one or two for men. Dr. William Dahut, the society’s chief scientific officer, said avoiding alcohol completely is best for cancer prevention, and people at high risk for cancer or recurrence should be very cautious.

Rehm said the findings reflect population-level mortality patterns and do not dictate one answer for every person. He said someone with a strong family history of heart disease may weigh risk differently from someone whose family history is dominated by cancer.

This story draws on original reporting from NBC News.