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On Friday, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for cancer warnings on alcoholic drink labels. This is yet another effort by the Biden Administration to fearmonger and further over-regulate the alcohol industry.
Efforts to regulate and disparage the alcohol industry are both based on insufficient evidence and go beyond the purview of the government’s duties.
In October, Americans for Tax Reform warned of efforts within the Biden Administration to vilify alcohol intake through the potential new guidelines outlined in the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture’s (USDA) 2025 – 2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs). Many suspect that the federal government will, without sufficient evidence, significantly reduce alcohol intake guidelines as in Canada, or even assert there is “no safe level,” as the World Health Organization (WHO) has.
As was detailed, the development process of the DGAs has utterly failed to be transparent, follow normal guideline processes, and adopt recommended reforms by the scientific community.
Unfortunately, it has become obvious that the federal government is less interested in the scientific process and more interested in reaching a very specific conclusion: all consumption of alcohol is dangerous. This, of course, is far from a scientific consensus, despite what bureaucrats may now assert.
In fact, just in 2020, the HHS and USDA concluded that “there was not a preponderance of evidence in the Committee’s review of studies… to substantiate changes related to the qualitative limits” for alcohol, which currently stand at two or less drinks per day for adult men and one or less drink per day for adult women.
A 2017 article in the New York Times eloquently illustrates the problem with studies around alcohol’s link to cancer. More specifically, the problem with the conclusions people draw from said studies.
As Aaron Carroll, the chief health officer for Indiana University, explains, depending on where you look, you can find a link between nearly everything we eat and both higher and lower rates of cancer.
Shall we plaster cancer warnings on deli ham? Ribeye steaks? Sugary pantry items? After all, each of those items have been demonstrated as potential links to cancer.
In 2017, the American Society of Clinical Oncology declared alcohol as a risk factor for cancer, even for light drinkers. The announcement says that 3.5 percent of cancer deaths are attributable to alcohol. Of course, the greatest risks, by far, lie with those who drink heavily – a lifestyle everyone acknowledges as unhealthy. Additionally, as Carroll outlines, smoking “is believed to intensify the relationship between alcohol and cancer.” Ultimately, if you account for heavy drinking and smoking, the number of cancer deaths attributable to alcohol approaches 0 percent.
Ironically, the meta-analysis that the American Society of Clinical Oncology based their conclusion on, yes, found a harmful relationship between light drinking and three kinds of cancer, but also found protective relationships between light drinking and six kinds of cancer. Still, the announcement concluded that even light drinking was “dangerous.”
As several meta-analyses demonstrate, light drinking is protective, moderate drinking has little to no effect, and heavy drinking is perilous.
Carroll also notes a few other studies showing a link between light/moderate drinking and better cognitive function and lower rates of diabetes:
“If you accept the methodology of case-control and cohort studies, from which many of the links between alcohol and cancer arise, you have to accept the results of similar studies of other diseases. For instance, a cohort study of about 6,000 people found that those who drank at least once a week had better cognitive function in middle age than those who didn’t. A 2004 systematic review found that moderate drinkers had lower rates of diabetes (up to 56 percent lower, although that’s a relative risk reduction).”
In the same vein, numerous studies have shown that light to moderate consumption of alcohol can be good for the heart. A recent study (including more than 50,000 people) in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, for the first time, found a direct, causal link between light/moderate alcohol consumption and long-term reductions in stress. This impact “appeared to significantly account for the reductions in heart disease risk.” For those with anxiety, “light to moderate drinking was associated with nearly double the cardiac-protective effect.”
Other studies have linked light to moderate consumption to lower rates of kidney stones, reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and a rise in good cholesterol levels. One of the most prominent benefits, of course, is that alcohol consumption is a catalyst for being social. Notably, social ties and, simply smiling, are integral to mental and physical health.
To conclude that there is “no safe level of alcohol,” is to willfully ignore compelling, scientific evidence. Still, the most important consideration is that it simply is not the government’s job to police industries it doesn’t like and attempt to influence Americans’ lifestyle choices.
