Alcoholic drinks should carry cancer risk warning labels, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said in a report Friday.
The report cites a direct link between alcohol consumption and at least seven types of cancer, including of the breast, colorectal, liver and mouth. An estimated 16.4% of total breast cancer cases are linked to drinking alcohol.
There are about 100,000 alcohol-related cancer cases and about 20,000 alcohol-related cancer deaths in the U.S. each year, the report found. Alcohol is the third-leading cause of cancer in the U.S., after tobacco and obesity.
While research has shown a link between alcohol and cancer, “the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk,” Murthy said in a statement.
People who do drink alcohol are likely familiar with the current health warning label, which reads:
GOVERNMENT WARNING: (1) According to the Surgeon General, women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects. (2) Consumption of alcoholic beverages impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery, and may cause health problems.
The current warning “has long informed consumers about the potential risks of the consumption of alcohol. Many lifestyle choices carry potential risks,” Dr. Amanda Berger, senior vice president of Science and Research at the Distilled Spirits Council, a trade organization representing companies that make alcoholic beverages, said in a statement.
She added that the group does “not recommend that anyone drink to achieve health benefits.”
Can damage from alcohol be reversed?
The new report may be an extra incentive for people doing Dry January or plans to cut back on drinking or quit. The body is able to heal some of alcohol’s adverse effects, experts say.
“While some damage can be permanent, some can be reversed,” said Dr. Wei Zheng, director of the Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. “Cutting down on drinking will certainly reduce risks in the future.”
Murthy said in an interview there’s no “magic level” of safe alcohol consumption for the entire population. “What we do know is that less alcohol consumption means less cancer risk.”
The advisory comes just weeks after another major report found that compared with abstaining from alcohol, moderate drinking was linked to a lower risk of death. But at the same time, scientists found that it also raised the risk of breast cancer.
That report, commissioned by Congress and carried out by a committee from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, reviewed research dating to 2010 to look at the relationship between moderate drinking and a number of outcomes, including death from any cause, death from heart disease, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, head and neck cancer, weight changes and Alzheimer’s disease.
Women in particular are susceptible to alcohol’s effects because they process and metabolize it differently than men, said Dr. Jamie Koprivnikar, an oncologist at Hackensack Meridian John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. “We know that they are likely to have potential toxicities at lower amounts or doses than men are.”
And a 2023 study found that alcohol-related deaths have risen dramatically among women in recent years.
Alcohol can cause cancer in several ways, including damaging DNA and altering hormone levels, according to the report.
Along with new warning labels, the surgeon general’s report also recommends reassessing the guideline limits for alcohol consumption to account for cancer risk. Current dietary guidelines recommend people drink alcohol in moderation, defined as two drinks a day for men and one drink for women.
“Even within the current guideline limits of one drink a day for women, two drinks a day for men, we actually see increased cancer risk, even consuming at those levels,” Murthy said.
Outside experts applauded the idea of adding cancer warning labels to alcoholic drinks.
“Despite decades of compelling evidence of this connection, too many in the public remain unaware of alcohol’s risk,” Dr. Bruce Scott, president of the American Medical Association said in a statement. The report, “coupled with a push to update the Surgeon General’s health warning label on alcoholic beverages, will bolster awareness, improve health, and save lives.”
Any change to the beverage labels requires congressional authorization.
An update to federal dietary guidelines coming this year is expected to include new recommendations about how much alcohol people should drink.
A report on alcohol consumption conducted by a group within the Department of Health and Human Services is set to be published in the coming weeks. That report will help determine the 2025 dietary guidelines.
