Alcohol labelling and cancer: a way to empower consumers despite industry opposition
Advice from the US surgeon general is consistent with the evidence but repeatedly opposed by commercial actors, says Nason Maani A recent advisory report from the outgoing US surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, on alcohol and cancer reiterated that alcohol is one of the main causes of preventable cancer.1 Public understanding of this risk remains low, and Murthy suggests that one way to counter the lack of awareness is through product labelling.1 The evidence cited in the advisory on the link between alcohol and cancer is now well established and the conclusions are similar to those of other countries. The United Kingdom’s low risk drinking guidelines were updated in 2016 in part to better reflect the emergence in recent decades of stronger evidence for a link between alcohol and cancer, with risks increasing in a dose respondent way.2 In 2023, the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer published a joint statement saying that alcohol was estimated to h
