Beltway bureaucrats, hands off our cans

Montana’s taverns aren’t just places to grab a drink. They serve as gathering spots for hosting celebrations, catching up with friends and neighbors, and generally play a vital role in our communities.

But there’s one small, influential group of activists from Washington D.C. that doesn’t appreciate our way of life and wants to change how Montanans drink and socialize.

The federal government is currently revising the Dietary Guidelines for Americans — a process that shapes everything from school lunches to agricultural policy. Usually, these guidelines have supported moderate alcohol consumption, allowing one alcoholic drink per day if you’re a woman, and two if you’re a man.

This year, anti-alcohol activists want to declare that there is “no safe level” of alcohol consumption.

These activists are driven by an anti-alcohol agenda, funded and supported by international prohibitionist groups such as Movendi. To avoid public scrutiny around their radical views, the review process has been quietly restructured to keep most of us in the dark.

In the past, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, selected based on expertise and public input, reviewed the preponderance of evidence before making recommendations to the departments of Agriculture and Human and Health Services.

This year, the process includes a secretive and hand-picked six-member panel to review alcohol guidelines without any of that pesky public oversight. 

This shady maneuvering has already kicked off concern from both sides of the political aisle. More than a dozen members of congress wrote a letter to Agriculture Secretary Vilsack and Human and Health Services Secretary Becerra requesting additional information on the process, and the Wall Street Journal has also raised questions about the lack of transparency.  

I support dietary guidelines that promote moderation, but those who are trying to hijack these guidelines are pushing for only their total abstinence agenda. This flies in the face of decades of evidence that people who drink in moderation live as long or longer than people who do not. It also shows a complete lack of common sense.

Sen. Jon Tester has long been an advocate for responsible personal choice, and I encourage him to urge the administration to make sure that the dietary guidelines are transparent, and not railroaded by a group of unaccountable scientists working in the shadows.

Montanans deserve policies that we can trust, created in the public arena, based on strong evidence, and reflective of our state’s values. Agriculture and Human and Health Services must remove biased researchers and restore integrity to the dietary guideline process before public trust is completed eroded.

 Chad Bachmeier is president of the Montana Tavern Association.