In a letter signed by mostly House Republicans but a lot of Democrats too, more than 100 Congressmen and women this week asked HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack why the fuck an underage drinking study they appropriated $1.3 million to conduct seems to be going rogue and keeps telling adults not to drink, pointing out that the study’s panel members “were not appropriately vetted for conflicts of interest” since, according to the New York Post, one of the members had a role in a recent WHO report that said no level of alcohol is safe for consumption by humans and another who personally recommends max one drink per day for adult men down from the government’s two max since 1980. So it’s time to pull the plug, per Congress.
If you’ll notice the first link above is to a PDF of the letter. It’s not hosted at a House.gov site though, but WineBusiness.com, making the whole “conflict of interest” charge sound a wee bit hypocritical.
Hell the lobbyists probably even wrote it for them. The Post points out that most of the members are from states with sizable booze industries so there’s the whole protecting people’s jobs aspect to this irrespective of whether the lobbyists are sending them bottles for signing on to the letter.