Why government health guidance on alcohol is, and always will be, incoherent 

Published January 16, 2026 4:24am ET



Dr. Mehmet Oz — one of the few members of President Donald Trump’s second administration who might once have rivaled him for network television fame — played to that very strength in early January while introducing the Department of Health and Human Services’s new alcohol consumption guidelines. Defending the Trump administration’s decision to ditch long-standing advice that drinkers limit themselves to two tipples per day for men and one for women, Oz offered reporters a pithy sound bite by way of personal advice: “Don’t have it for breakfast.”

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