* As with cigarettes, there should also be labels on alcoholic drinks warning that alcohol also kills, as the surgeon general’s report links alcohol to increased risk of 7 cancers
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is calling for new warning labels on alcoholic drinks that inform consumers of the health risks — particularly an increased risk of at least seven types of cancer, including breast cancer, liver cancer and colon cancer.
In the new report on alcohol consumption and cancer risk published on Jan. 3, Murthy also called for the guidelines on alcohol consumption limits to be reassessed.
“Many people out there assume that as long as they’re drinking at the limits or below the limits of current guidelines of one a day for women and two for men, that there is no risk to their health or well-being,” Murthy said in an interview with the New York Times. “The data does not bear that out for cancer risk.”
Ireland recently became the first country in the European Union (and second worldwide after South Korea) to better regulate booze by adding cancer warnings and health information to alcohol products. Meanwhile, the U.S. hasn’t updated its own alcohol warning labels in 36 years — despite the fact that we’ve learned a lot since then about alcohol and its associated health risks.
What’s the current status of alcohol warning labels in the U.S.?
Globally, only a quarter of countries require health warnings on alcohol, according to the New York Times. The U.S. is one of those countries, but labels here haven’t been updated since 1989.
Currently, warning labels say that “women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects” and that “consumption of alcoholic beverages impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery, and may cause health problems.”
Christopher Kahler, a psychiatry professor and director of alcohol and addiction studies at Brown University, tells Yahoo Life that current labels focus on messaging intended to mitigate the acute risks from alcohol — like the immediate effects on a pregnancy or driving abilities — instead of relaying information on health consequences that can arise later on. The World Health Organization has identified alcohol as a carcinogen and says that no amount of alcohol is considered safe for our health. Yet many are unaware of the harmful health consequences of drinking that experts have been flagging for years; research shows that 51% of people don’t know that alcohol is associated with an increased risk of cancer, for example.
Kahler says that in their current form, he would be “very surprised” if warning labels on alcohol were having any effect on drinking habits.
“My guess is most people don’t look at that label, and what they see on the label is nothing new,” he says. “And so my guess is it’s having very little impact on people’s behavior.”
If done well, can warning labels actually work?
One recent study found that when young men looked at alcohol warning labels that were larger and included a picture of a young man with a bloody face, they experienced “lower activation of the reward circuits in their brains,” and the warning labels “significantly reduced their reported desire to drink.”
Another study conducted in the Yukon in Canada found that adding labels to alcohol that included information on cancer risks not only reduced alcohol sales, but it also found that people who bought alcohol with the new warning labels better remembered information about national drinking guidelines and cancer risks.
“These colorful, well-designed labels, which rotated across four message areas, reduced consumption in the area where the labels were introduced by 6.3% compared with control areas and the neighboring jurisdiction of the Northwest Territories,” study author Tim Stckwell, a scientist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, tells Yahoo Life. “By contrast the U.S. warning labels have had hardly any effect on behavior — though they did a little for knowledge and awareness.”
Cigarette warning labels and package inserts are the poster child for successfully relaying a product’s health risks, with illustrated, detailed messages such as “smoking causes head and neck cancer” and “smoking can cause heart disease and strokes by clogging arteries” and “smoking reduces blood flow, which can cause erectile dysfunction.
Suzanne Colby, deputy director of the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University, tells Yahoo Life that warning labels on cigarettes have effectively increased knowledge about health risks, decreased the appeal of cigarettes and increased intentions to quit smoking. While it’s less clear and less studied whether these warning labels have led to a decrease in smoking habits, she says such public health messaging could be used for alcohol as a way to get the word out that it’s harmful.
“Given the massive knowledge gap for alcohol consumers, warning labels that are more specific and updated seem an ideal regulatory option since we know labels can increase knowledge — and knowledge can change norms and ultimately lead to behavior change,” Colby says.
What changes could make alcohol warning labels more effective?
Experts emphasize that updating warning labels won’t necessarily guarantee changes in behavior, but providing more information — and making that information easier to find — can help people become better informed, which may lead to modifications in drinking habits. Here’s how alcohol warning labels could be altered to be more effective.
Update the labels regularly. The work shouldn’t ever really end. Periodically updating the information or look of alcohol warning labels can keep them from getting “stale” and easy to ignore. “If you see the same label every single time and it’s just a little bit of words on the back, it’s not something that people are going to notice,” Kahler says. (Yahoo News)
