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US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called for including cancer risk warnings on alcoholic beverage labels. The surgeon said alcohol consumption increases the risk of at least seven types of cancer, including breast, colon and liver cancer, but most American consumers are unaware of it.
The surgeon also called for re-evaluating guidelines for limits on alcohol consumption so that people consider cancer risks when deciding whether or how much to drink.
“Alcohol use is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States, after tobacco and obesity,” Murthy’s office said in a statement accompanying the new report. Reuters.
The report also highlights that heavy alcohol consumption increases the risk of cancer, with about five extra women per 100 and three more men developing cancer after drinking twice a day.
The Surgeon General’s advisory states that alcohol is responsible for 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 cancer deaths in the US each year, and more than 13,500 alcohol-related traffic accident deaths.
Warning of cancer risk from alcohol may face tough road with Trump
President-elect Donald Trump and his nominee to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., do not drink alcohol and have been vocal about the dangers of alcohol. But neither rushed to adopt the outgoing Biden administration’s recommendation that alcoholic beverages carry warning labels about cancer risks.
Brian Darling, a Republican strategist and former senior aide to U.S. Senator Rand Paul, doesn’t think the new Republican-controlled Congress will approve adding cancer-risk labels to wine.
He said, “I can’t imagine that a Republican Congress would act like a nanny state and force labeling on alcoholic beverages that they can cause cancer.” “It seems completely inconsistent with liberty and everything the party stands for.”
(With inputs from Reuters)
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