Alcohol causes cancer, says the surgeon general—and science agrees

The link between alcohol and cancer is the subject of an advisory by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, so Newsweek reached out to experts for their thoughts on the topic.

In a statement issued Friday, Murthy said: “Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States—greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the U.S.—yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk.

“This Advisory lays out steps we can all take to increase awareness of alcohol’s cancer risk and minimize harm,” he said.

Those steps include adding a health warning about the risk of cancer to labels on alcoholic drinks, reassessing the guideline limits for alcohol consumption, and encouraging health care professionals to inform their patients about the cancer risks of alcohol.

Dr. Triona McCarthy, a public health medicine consultant at Ireland’s Health Service Executive and part of its National Cancer Control program, told Newsweek: “Alcohol is a classified as what we call a Group One carcinogen…which means it’s undisputed. So there’s a proven causal link between alcohol and quite a number of types of cancer.”

How Much U.S. Illness, Death Does Alcohol Contribute To?

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says alcohol raises the risk of several kinds of cancer: mouth and throat, voice box, esophagus, colon and rectum, liver and breast (in women).

Heavy drinking may also contribute to the risk of stomach, pancreatic and prostate cancer, the CDC says.

“It’s the actual alcohol,” McCarthy said. “It’s not the type of alcohol that you drink that increases your cancer risk. It doesn’t matter whether it’s wine or beer or spirits—it’s the amount of actual ethanol, the chemical.”

Is There Any Safe Level of Alcohol Consumption?

Many countries, including the U.S., have guidelines about minimum levels of alcohol consumption that are safer than drinking heavily. But science is increasingly pointing to the harm of consuming even a small amount of alcohol.

“Even though people talk about safe thresholds, in terms of ‘make sure you drink less than this amount per week,’ certainly from a cancer point of view there’s no safe minimum amount of alcohol that you can drink when it comes to your cancer risk,” McCarthy said.

Previous studies have linked some alcohol consumption to lower risks of certain diseases—such as a glass of red wine per day for heart health—but many have criticized these studies for not considering other factors.

For instance, red wine tends to be consumed by affluent people who have access to more medical care, and some nondrinkers avoid alcohol because of medical problems.

How Can Alcohol Cause Cancer?

Alcohol can lead to cancer in several ways, McCarthy explained. For instance, when we drink alcohol, the body turns ethanol into acetaldehyde, a toxic substance that can affect the DNA in our cells.

“Cancers occur as a result of uncontrolled growth of cells, so if your DNA is damaged and can’t repair itself, then that’s how a cancer can occur,” McCarthy said.

All the places that the alcohol touches when we drink it, such as the mouth, throat and gut, might be affected, she explained, because the alcohol might be absorbed into cells in these places.

Alcohol can also affect hormone levels in the body, increasing the risk of breast cancer, she said. Approximately 16.5 percent of breast cancer cases are linked to alcohol consumption, according to the Surgeon General’s advisory.

And alcohol can deliver toxic substances, such as tobacco smoke, to places in the body where those substances could do damage.

“That’s sort of a double whammy, unfortunately, for people that both smoke and drink,” McCarthy said.

Will Americans Get New Warning Labels on Drinks?

Murthy has called for new warnings about the dangers of cancer to be added to alcoholic drinks, but it is not clear whether this will become law.

A similar regulation was approved in Ireland in 2023 and goes into effect in 2026. Alcoholic beverages will then have to warn about the risk of cancers.

McCarthy said she supports the regulation, saying it would provide consumers with information they should have about the health risks of alcohol.

Dr. Richard Piper, CEO of Alcohol Change U.K., told Newsweek that the warning labels would be “a welcome move.”

“We’re purposefully being denied the truth about alcohol,” he said. “It isn’t labeled in the same way as other food and drink with calories or nutritional information, nor does it come with any warnings about the health risks, like those seen on packets of cigarettes or over-the-counter drugs.

“That’s because alcohol labeling is, both in the U.S. and the U.K., largely regulated by the alcohol industry itself,” he said. “And, of course, they want to sell as many alcoholic drinks as they can.”

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