Everyone Deserves a Fair Chance at a Healthy Life
For most people health is a shared priority. Health is a public good that most people care deeply about. People want accurate information about cancer risk. They want their governments to take action on preventable disease and public policies that put community wellbeing before private profit. When governments act on evidence and in the public interest, and when communities act together, health improves, inequalities shrink, and trust in public institutions grows.
This shared commitment to human rights, social justice, and democracy drives Movendi International’s work on alcohol and cancer – and it shaped our message at the 10th Caribbean Alcohol Reduction Day webinar.
Across the region, alcohol fuels a growing cancer and noncommunicable disease crisis in the Caribbean. This reality reflects how markets operate, how information (does not yet) flows, and how policy initiatives face alcohol industry interference. ut collective action can bring about much needed change.
Caribbean Alcohol Reduction Day 2026 sends a clear message: be loud for change.
Alcohol Is Driving a Growing Health Burden in the Caribbean
New Global Burden of Disease long-term data show a steep rise in alcohol-driven noncommunicable diseases across the Caribbean. The trend accelerates over the past decade, reflecting more years of life cut short and more people living with preventable illness.
These figures represent parents, partners, workers, and caregivers whose health suffers because alcohol remains cheap, widely available, and aggressively marketed. As inequalities widen, health systems absorb the costs of alcohol harm and struggle under the disease burden. Communities endure the suffering and loss.
This outcome follows from policy inertia. Inadequate alcohol policy, high physical availability and affordability, and sustained marketing pressure create conditions where harm accumulates year after year.
Alcohol Is Also Fuelling a Caribbean Cancer Crisis
The second chart tells an equally powerful story. Alcohol-caused cancer is rising dramatically across the Caribbean, with faster growth in recent years. This trajectory mirrors well-established scientific evidence:
- Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer.
- No amount of alcohol use can be defined as safe when it comes to cancer risk.
- Already low levels of consumption contribute substantially to population-level cancer burden, particularly among women.
Yet public awareness of the alcohol–cancer link remains low across regions, including the Caribbean. This knowledge gap persists because alcohol companies systematically dominate and pollute information environments through marketing, sponsorship, and narrative control while opposing clear health warnings and evidence-based guidelines.
When people lack accurate information about cancer risk, collective decision-making suffers. Democracy weakens when commercial interests shape what people know about their health.
The Big Why: Reasons Why Movendi Works on Alcohol and Cancer
Movendi’s engagement with the alcohol–cancer link flows from our core values.
Movendi works on the alcohol–cancer link because of the human rights, social justice, democracy, social norms, and global justice implications of the harms from alcohol products.
People have a human right to clear and accurate information about risks that affect their health and lives.
Social justice requires protection for people who face even higher cancer risk exposure and greater harm, including women and young girls, cancer patients, and people living with alcohol use disorder.
Democracy thrives when people understand how alcohol increases cancer risk, because knowledge enriches public debate and knowledge about the alcohol-cancer link consistently builds public support for effective alcohol policy action.
Addressing the alcohol–cancer link also helps shift social norms towards inclusion, health, and safety for all by denormalising alcohol as an everyday product and recognising the products and practices of alcohol companies as drivers of serious harm.
At the global level, this work advances global justice and solidarity by exposing and countering the power of Big Alcohol – that profits from harm and whose commercial strategies place private profits above people’s wellbeing.
State of the Art: What We Know
Scientific evidence has firmly established the link between alcohol and cancer for decades. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified alcohol as a carcinogen as early as 1988, and in 2023 the World Health Organization reaffirmed this evidence in a landmark statement published in The Lancet.
Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer, and no amount of alcohol use can be described as safe or healthy when it comes to cancer risk.
Cancer risk increases already with low-dose alcohol use, which explains why a large share of alcohol-related cancers occurs among people who consume relatively small amounts.
Despite this, public awareness of the alcohol–cancer link remains low and lags far behind awareness of the tobacco–cancer connection. Experience shows that when awareness rises, public support for effective alcohol policy grows as well, especially when communication focuses on shared protection and prevention rather than individual blame or fear.
But a 2025 study showed that alcohol industry misinformation and doubt-casting can block the pathway from awareness to public support for evidence-based alcohol policy. Acceptance of the science is a key enabling condition.
What “No Safe Level” Means for Cancer Prevention
The statement that no safe level of alcohol use exists for cancer risk carries a precise and policy-relevant meaning. It does not claim that every person who consumes alcohol will develop cancer. It establishes that every increase in alcohol exposure increases cancer risk. Making a clear distinction about what “risk” means and what “harm” means is key so that people believe the science about alcohol’s carcinogenic effects and understand it.
At the population level, this matters profoundly. A large share of alcohol-attributable cancer cases arises from widespread low-dose consumption, not only from heavy use. Breast and colorectal cancers illustrate this pattern clearly, especially among women. For example in Germany, more than 20% of alcohol-related cancer cases of both types are in women who consume less than 2 alcoholic drinks per day.
This reality exposes the limits of industry narratives that seek to locate alcohol harm within only a small minority. Cancer prevention requires population-level solutions that reshape environments.
Structural Forces Sustain Harm
Three interlocking dynamics sustain the current trajectory of the alcohol-fueled cancer crisis in the Caribbean (and elsewhere).
First, many people underestimate their own alcohol use. Survey evidence from multiple countries shows that people who engage in high-risk or dependent alcohol use often describe themselves as “light” or “moderate” consumers. Women receive less accurate feedback about risk and face targeted marketing that frames regular heavy alcohol use as normal and aspirational.
Second, alcohol corporations invest heavily in shaping perception. Big Alcohol dominates and pollutes information environments. Marketing budgets far exceed public health communication resources. As a result, corporate messaging often becomes the most visible source of information about alcohol, ensuring that commercial messaging reaches people earlier, more frequently, and with greater emotional resonance than independent health information.
A landmark study in 2022 explained the problem powerfully:
The alcohol industry spends more than $1 billion each year to market its products in the United States; as a result, the most readily available information about alcohol comes from alcohol companies themselves.”
Grummon, A. and Hall, M., 2022. Updated Health Warnings for Alcohol — Informing Consumers and Reducing Harm. New England Journal of Medicine, 387(9), pp.772-774.
Third, alcohol industry interference delays, derails, and dilutes health policy. Opposition to warning labels, resistance to taxation, and efforts to dilute dietary guidelines seek to preserve profitability while externalising health costs to communities, governments, and societies.
For instance, after the U.S. Surgeon General called for cancer warning labels on alcohol in January 2025, alcohol industry pressure intensified. By January 2026, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines failed to adequately address cancer risk due to alcohol, following interference in scientific processes, including the National Academies review.
These alcohol industry actions preserve profits while delaying health promotion. Together, these forces produce predictable outcomes – rising disease burden, delayed disease prevention, and avoidable human suffering.
Regional Collaboration Is Shifting the Narrative
Across the region, collaboration is translating evidence into action. The Latin America and Caribbean Code Against Cancer marks a major step forward in aligning cancer prevention with scientific evidence and public interest.
Developed by a consortium of experts and civil society actors convened by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the Pan American Health Organization, the Code recommends to people to avoid alcohol to reduce cancer risk. It also advises governments to implement alcohol taxation, warning labels, and other high-impact alcohol policies as core cancer prevention tools.
This approach reflects a shared commitment to protect people rather than markets. It situates cancer prevention within public policy, where it belongs.
This regional effort demonstrates what partnership makes possible: policies grounded in science, shaped by local realities, and oriented toward people’s wellbeing.
Alcohol Taxation Delivers Cancer Prevention and Social Benefits
Alcohol taxation stands out as one of the most powerful and cost-effective tools for cancer prevention. Evidence consistently shows that higher alcohol prices reduce population-level alcohol consumption, prevent harm, reduce costs, and generate public revenue that governments can reinvest in health promotion and social protection.
Taxation works because it changes conditions for entire populations. Raising alcohol taxes to reduce alcohol affordability reshapes everyday environments. It reduces exposure, protects young people, advances equity, and delivers measurable health gains quickly.
For example, in 2021, an assessment of the impact of increasing alcohol excise duties on the burden of cancer caused by alcohol in countries in the WHO European Region showed the rapid benefits of raising alcohol taxes for cancer prevention. The modelling study was produced by scientists from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in collaboration with the WHO European Office for Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases and partner institutions in Germany and Canada.
The researchers estimated that almost 11,000 new cancer cases and almost 5000 cancer deaths due to alcohol could have been avoided in the WHO European Region in 2019 by doubling the current excise duties on alcoholic beverages.
The largest potential reductions in cancer deaths were estimated for female breast cancer and for colorectal cancer.
For governments committed to development, equity, and sustainability, alcohol taxation aligns health goals with fiscal responsibility.
Be Loud for Change: Turning Shared Values Into Healthier Lives
With our Be Loud for Change campaign we recognise a simple truth: when people understand how alcohol drives cancer, they support action that protects health and fairness.
Talking openly about alcohol and cancer affirms core values. People have the right to accurate information about health risks. Communities have a right to governments taking action to ensure protection from preventable harm. Democratic decision-making thrives on transparency and social participation rather than commercial interference and distortion.
The Caribbean data show a rising burden and a clear path forward. Evidence-based alcohol policy helps prevent cancer, strengthens health systems, and advances social justice. Governments, scientists, and civil society are already working together to accelerate this change.
As today’s webinar showed: The tools exist. The partnerships are active. By acting together, governments, communities, civil society, and academia can turn knowledge into policy action and values into lasting change.
Now is the moment to amplify that collaboration, defend policy space, and be loud for change.
