A report on alcohol consumption and cancer risk published on Friday, Jan. 3, 2025, has highlighted considerable health risks – particularly an increased risk of at least seven types of cancer, including breast cancer, liver cancer and colon cancer.
Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General, twitted on Friday: “Today, I’m releasing a Surgeon General’s Advisory on the causal link between alcohol consumption and increased cancer risk. Alcohol is the 3rd leading preventable cause of cancer in the U.S., contributing to about 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 cancer deaths each year.”
Murthy is calling for new warning labels on alcoholic drinks that inform consumers of the health risks.
“Many people out there assume that as long as they’re drinking at the limits or below the limits of current guidelines of one a day for women and two for men, that there is no risk to their health or well-being,” Murthy said in an interview with the New York Times. “The data does not bear that out for cancer risk.”
Ireland recently became the first country in the European Union (and second worldwide after South Korea) to better regulate booze by adding cancer warnings and health information to alcohol products. Meanwhile, the U.S. hasn’t updated its own alcohol warning labels in 36 years – despite the fact that it learned a lot since then about alcohol and its associated health risks.
Globally, only a quarter of countries require health warnings on alcohol, according to the New York Times. The U.S. is one of those countries, but labels here haven’t been updated since 1989.
Currently, warning labels say that “women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects” and that “consumption of alcoholic beverages impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery, and may cause health problems.”
One recent study found that when young men looked at alcohol warning labels that were larger and included a picture of a young man with a bloody face, they experienced “lower activation of the reward circuits in their brains,” and the warning labels “significantly reduced their reported desire to drink.”
Another study conducted in the Yukon in Canada found that adding labels to alcohol that included information on cancer risks not only reduced alcohol sales, but it also found that people who bought alcohol with the new warning labels better remembered information about national drinking guidelines and cancer risks.
Experts emphasise that updating warning labels won’t necessarily guarantee changes in behaviour, but providing more information – and making that information easier to find – can help people become better informed, which may lead to modifications in drinking habits.
