Tobacco-style Label Warning on Alcohol Products
An urgent call to combat cancer
Dr. M. Aamir Mirza, Jamia Hamdard
The globally acclaimed healthcare agencies have raised alarms to put a warning signal over the alcohol-based products i.e., drinking increases the risk of cancer. The major ones are WHO’s Europe office and the Office of the Surgeon General, USA. There is a significant lack of awareness amongst the consumer about the potential risk of cancers, as concluded in some recent survey-based studies. Currently the same is being implemented in 3 European countries and South Korea.
Alcohol consumption, is a major cause of death globally, and the worst part of it is that there is a significant amount of unawareness, even in the regions like Europe and the US. Based on the different types of scientific studies (like meta-analysis, SLR, observational, in vivo preclinical and genetic studies), the globally acclaimed healthcare experts/agencies have started raising alarms and now the WHO Regional Office for Europe and Office of the Surgeon General (USA) have suggested to put a warning signal over the alcohol-based products, like being used in the tobacco-based products. The warning can be textual (e.g., drinking increases the risk of cancer) or symbol/pictorial. The agencies of the same opinion are- Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (USA), National Cancer Institute (USA), International Agency for Research on Cancer, World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR), Institute of Alcohol Studies (UK) etc. The specific biological mechanisms have also been established. It includes a wide range of alcohol products (e.g., beer, wine and spirit) and the cancer as well, like in breast (in women), colorectum, oesophagus, liver, mouth (oral cavity), throat (pharynx), and voice box or larynx.
The proposal is well corroborated by several survey-based studies. A Canadian study claims that warning labels have increased awareness by around 10 per cent. A study report published in 2023 claims that approximately 1/3 of citizens of the Republic of Korea aged 20–69 were aware that alcohol causes cancer. While a French study showed that warning labels had been noticed by 66.1 per cent of women and 77.3 per cent of people consuming alcohol five years after their introduction. But in any case the label warning is going to have a positive impact in terms of awareness.
Health warnings are already mandated in some countries like Armenia, Australia, Belarus, Chile, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, New Zealand, the Republic of Moldova, the Russian Federation, South Africa, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and the United States. The Republic of Korea is, until Ireland’s regulation, the only country worldwide with legislation that includes cancer warnings on the labels of alcohol containers. Ireland is going to implement the cancer related warning on labels from 22 May 2026. Health related warning on labels in Europe are focused on pregnancy (France, Lithuania) or age (Germany). Among other EU countries, only Sweden mentions cancer in its health warnings, although these are on advertisements, not labels.
Surprisingly, the label of a juice product has more information than an alcohol product. Aren’t our regulations indirectly supporting the alcohol business? Spreading awareness is further expected to cut-short the government expenses on cancer treatment and rehabilitation programmes.
Alcohol producers have a different opinion against the blanket cancer warnings on the labels, fearing it to be creating unnecessary anxiety. The alcohol-producing countries like Italy, Spain and France are also against the proposal and taking this measure as a risk to Europe's alcohol industry.
References:
1. General, US Surgeon. "Alcohol and Cancer Risk." (2025).
2. Alcohol health warning labels: a public health perspective for Europe. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe; 2025. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO
3. Griswold, Max G., Nancy Fullman, Caitlin Hawley, Nicholas Arian, Stephanie RM Zimsen, Hayley D. Tymeson, Vidhya Venkateswaran et al. "Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016." The Lancet 392, no. 10152 (2018): 1015-1035.
4. Hobin, Erin, Ashini Weerasinghe, Kate Vallance, David Hammond, Jonathan McGavock, Thomas K. Greenfield, Nour Schoueri-Mychasiw, Catherine Paradis, and Tim Stockwell. "Testing alcohol labels as a tool to communicate cancer risk to drinkers: a real-world quasi-experimental study." Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 81, no. 2 (2020): 249-261.
5. Dumas, Agnès, Stéphanie Toutain, Catherine Hill, and Laurence Simmat-Durand. "Warning about drinking during pregnancy: lessons from the French experience." Reproductive health 15 (2018): 1-9.
The author is a New Delhi based academician and R&D consultant, having working experience of global healthcare companies. Can be reached at [email protected]
Dr. M. Aamir Mirza is working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics, Jamia Hamdard, an NIRF Rank 1 institute and a NAAC ‘A+” grade deemed to be University. He has a multifaceted career portfolio adorned with both industry and academic accomplishments. During his industry stay he became a seasoned scientist and dealt with challenging NCE/NDA development. He is on advisory boards of some international research-based companies of India, New Zealand and Europe. Academics and Research being close to his heart, he has published more than 100 manuscripts in the journals of international repute and has been granted 02 Indian patent and filed for 03. He has contributed several chapters in books published by reputed authors like Elsevier and Bentham. He is amongst the very few scientists globally who has an expertise in Humic substances research. A well-travelled scientist; he has delivered scientific addresses in countries like USA, Austria, Japan, Netherlands, Turkey, Estonia, Spain and Russia.
