U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is calling for cancer risk warnings to be included on alcoholic beverages, prompting questions about the health impacts of alcohol and whether updated labels will be seen on shelves.
“Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States – greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the U.S. – yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk,” Murthy said in a news release Friday.
Does alcohol cause cancer?
Alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the country, after tobacco and obesity, the advisory notes.
The American Medical Association praised Murthy’s advisory and his push to update alcoholic warning labels. In a statement Friday, the doctors group said the label “will bolster awareness, improve health, and save lives” in the wake of “decades of compelling evidence” tying alcohol consumption to cancer.
A September report from the American Association for Cancer Research also found excessive levels of alcohol consumption increase the risk for six different types of cancer, including:
“Some of this is happening through chronic inflammation. We also know that alcohol changes the microbiome, so those are the bacteria that live in your gut, and that can also increase the risk,” Dr. Céline Gounder, CBS News medical contributor and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News, recently said on “CBS Mornings.”
How much alcohol is too much?
“Excessive levels of alcohol” equates to about three or more drinks per day for women and four or more drinks per day for men, Gounder said.
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a standard alcoholic drink contains 14 grams (or 0.6 ounces) of pure alcohol. Generally, this amount is found in 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine and 1.5 ounces, or a “shot,” of 80-proof distilled spirits or liquor.
Other studies have shown, however, that there is no “safe amount” of alcohol, Gounder said, particularly if you have underlying medical conditions.
“If you don’t drink, don’t start drinking. If you do drink, really try to keep it within moderation,” she said.
Dr. Amy Comander, medical director of the Mass General Cancer Center Waltham specializing in breast cancer, previously told CBS News there “really isn’t a safe amount of alcohol for consumption.”
“In fact, it’s best to not drink alcohol at all, but that is obviously hard for many people. So I think it’s really important for individuals to just be mindful of their alcohol consumption and certainly drink less,” Comander said.
Will warning labels on alcohol be updated?
As Murthy noted in the advisory, Congress has the ability to change the label — but warning labels haven’t been updated since 1988.
Currently, warning labels are required on alcoholic beverages to state that women who are pregnant should not drink alcohol due to the risk of birth defects. They must also state that “consumption of alcoholic beverages impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery, and may cause health problems.”
Murthy calls for adding a cancer risk warning and pursuing changes that would make the warning label “more visible, prominent, and effective in increasing awareness about cancer risks associated with alcohol consumption.”
Congressional Republicans have been critical of the Biden administration’s approach to alcohol, as they have been working on laying the groundwork for new recommendations.
“HHS appears to be driving toward approving Dietary Guidelines that by default recommend that Americans consume no alcohol whatsoever, despite a continually evolving scientific debate about the risks and benefits of moderate alcohol consumption,” a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra read.
How do alcohol guidelines in the U.S. compare to other countries?
Around the world, health authorities are shifting recommendations to drinking less or no alcohol.
In 2023, Canadian health authorities made it clear that “drinking less is better,” adding that “even a small amount of alcohol can be damaging to health.”
The United Kingdom also promotes the message: “Drink less.” “There’s no completely safe level of drinking, but sticking within these guidelines lowers your risk of harming your health,” its National Health Service website notes.
In recent years, the World Health Organization and other countries have also shared the idea that there’s no safe level of drinking.
In the U.S., there’s been some pushback to how other countries have updated guidelines and warnings.
The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, for example, previously criticized Ireland’s new required warnings about alcohol’s cancer risk as “misleading” and “disproportionate.”
contributed to this report.
