This article explores how countries are addressing cancer risks due to alcohol by highlighting effective strategies and the challenges they face.
Which countries have – or will have – effective warning labels, which countries have state-of-the-art low-risk alcohol use guidelines, and are there public awareness efforts on alcohol and cancer?
In addition to these questions, the article also exposes how the alcohol industry works to keep people in the dark about the alcohol and cancer link and how Big Alcohol blocks countries from adopting evidence-based approaches to informing people.
How Do Countries Inform Their People That Alcohol Causes Cancer?
Alcohol’s cancer risk is well known and documented across the world. The World Health Organisation identifies alcohol as a Group 1 carcinogen, categorising it alongside tobacco and asbestos.
Already in 1988, the World Health Organization concluded that alcohol is carcinogenic to humans. The scientific evidence has grown ever since and in early 2023, the WHO issued a clear statement that made waves: “No safe amount of alcohol consumption for cancers can be established.”
But a landmark a study revealed in 2020 that only few governments have communicated the fact that alcohol causes cancer to the public. Only a quarter of the all countries required any health warnings on alcohol. And if they did, the language on the labels was generally vague, and cancer warnings were even more scarce. The study also exposed how the alcohol industry seeks to keep their customers in the dark about alcohol-related cancer risks.
Evidence shows that Big Alcohol is doing everything they can to keep people in the dark: from muddying the science, to propagating myths, to derailing policy initiatives.
Despite all the evidence and due to alcohol industry interference, the general public still remains largely unaware of this risk.
But governments worldwide are increasingly stepping up action to fill this knowledge gap through health warnings on alcohol products, public guidelines for lower risk alcohol use, and public campaigns to increase recognition of the real extent of alcohol harms and risks.
This article explores how countries are addressing cancer risks due to alcohol by highlighting effective strategies and the challenges they face.
Best practice alcohol labeling examples and public support
The countries in this overview: Ireland, South Korea, Thailand, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, United States, European Union, Jamaica, The Commonwealth of Independent States, Canada, The Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Mexico, Nordic countries, Latin America and the Caribbean, United Kingdom, France, and Spain Japan.
The overview also provides information about public awareness campaigns on alcohol and cancer in countries around the world. We also chronicle WHO Europe’s Redefine alcohol initiative. And the overview reveals how Big Alcohol fights cancer warning label and misleads the public.
