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Did You Know Alcohol Causes Cancer?
In the Covid era, it’s likely undiagnosed cancer.
We put warning labels on cigarette packages to let smokers know that they come with an increased risk of lung cancer. That alone isn’t enough to stamp out the habit, because our optimism bias tends to make us believe that even if smoking kills half of the people that do it, we’ll be one of the lucky ones that dodges the bullet. The only way to end the societal costs of a lot of unnecessary and expensive cancers may be New Zealand’s approach, which will steadily raise the smoking age until it eventually excludes the entire population. But at least smokers can confront their addiction while being informed about the risk.
For alcohol, not so much. Booze significantly increases your risks of mouth cancer, pharyngeal cancer, laryngeal cancer, esophageal cancer, breast cancer, stomach cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, and colorectal cancer. Averaging three and a half drinks a day increases your risks of breast or colon cancer by 1.5 times, and doubles or even triples your risk of cancer of the mouth or throat.
Most drinkers don’t know that. There are no warning labels. The industry doesn’t want them, and in our pay-to-play political system, what a wealthy business wants, it usually gets. Sales of booze net nearly two Trillion dollars a year. Alcohol…
