On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending the weaponization of the federal government. The move aimed to undo the damage caused by the Biden administration‘s politically driven prosecutions, most notably of Trump.
While this is a promising first step, officials must extend their focus beyond former President Joe Biden’s abuse of the legal system to address broader concerns, such as the weaponization of the United States’s public health infrastructure. Biden’s team quietly leveraged the government’s powers to manipulate processes that promoted biased scientific reasoning, ultimately positioning itself to restrict Americans’ liberty.
Beyond waging political prosecutions, federal officials weaponized their bully pulpits to tarnish the reputations of industries across the spectrum. One of the worst offenders in this regard was former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a left-wing politician who attempted to cloak his political agenda under the guise of neutral public health guidance.
Murthy consistently used his office to impose a progressive, nanny-state agenda on Americans. Like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Murthy pressured social media companies to censor content he disagreed with, not trusting people to evaluate the facts for themselves. Murthy also took aim at the firearm industry, demanding lawmakers stomp on Americans’ Second Amendment rights to address the supposed public health crisis of gun violence.
Murthy saved his most high-profile stunt for last. I recently spoke at a CPAC panel on nutritional guidance, where I called out this political play that served as a scare tactic and a vehicle to extend left-wing nanny-state rule. On his way out the door following Trump’s victory, Murthy issued a surgeon general’s advisory that all alcoholic beverages should have cigarette-style cancer warning labels.
This headline-grabbing announcement reflected the Biden administration’s leftist ploys to control our personal lives. Murthy made a last-ditch effort to use his office to push a political narrative with the goal of regulating our lives even further. Biden officials made it clear where they stood on Americans’ personal freedoms, and simply having a beer joined the list of things we should not decide anymore.
Murthy’s announcement coincidentally came just before the Biden administration’s newly concocted panel at the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking released a report on adults, not underaged individuals, consuming alcohol. This shadowy body was notably criticized for its lack of transparency. It delivered similar findings to the recommendations of Murthy’s advisory, leveraging his moment to amplify its neo-prohibitionist-driven findings to scare the public, not educate it.
What makes the situation particularly concerning is that Murthy and ICCPUD’s statements contrasted the findings of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which was tasked by Congress with reviewing thousands of studies on moderate alcohol consumption. These results, as well as other scientifically reviewed findings, were released before Murthy or ICCPUD concluded wildly different findings.
So then, why did Murthy and ICCPUD ignore the findings of unbiased scientists? Why did they continue to waste money and proceed with a duplicative process to create the ICCPUD adult alcohol intake study? It’s simple: to advance the Biden administration’s anti-alcohol agenda in pursuit of the Left’s ever-increasing desire to create a nanny state.
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More specifically, the process reflected in the NASEM report did not align with the Biden administration’s approach to the topic. Just as when he pushed for social media censorship and unconstitutional gun control, Murthy’s attacks on personal freedoms revealed his fundamental belief that Americans are too stupid to make decisions on their own. Rather than trusting people to evaluate the evidence for themselves and make individual risk assessments, the Biden administration chose to leverage its megaphone to launch a broadside attack against the idea of having a cold beer after work.
Through Murthy and ICCPUD’s actions, the Biden administration attempted to scare Americans, not inform them. Issuing a thoughtful report carefully summarizing the latest research is one thing. Releasing headline-grabbing proposals at the taxpayers’ expense is quite another. Thanks to Trump’s victory, I look forward to an administration and public health authorities that are once again focused on using their platforms to advance facts, not political narratives.
Andrew Langer is director of the CPAC Foundation Center for Regulatory Freedom.