While the US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, may have called for cancer warning labels on bottles of alcohol, don’t expect to see them any time soon.
On 3 January this year, Dr Murthy released a new Surgeon General’s Advisory on Alcohol and Cancer Risk, calling alcohol consumption the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the US after tobacco and obesity.
“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,” Dr Murthy said via a press release.
“This Advisory lays out steps we can all take to increase awareness of alcohol’s cancer risk and minimize harm.”
Those steps include adding a cancer warning to alcohol and making the warning visible and prominent.
Obstacles to any new labels
Before warning labels could be implemented, they would need action from Congress — and the last time Congress authorised changes to alcohol labels was in 1988.
Congress would also have to face down the entire alcohol industry. Such labels would suggest that all levels of drinking were potentially hazardous to health, and not just heavy drinking; December’s report on alcohol from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), however, was much more equivocal about the risk of cancer from moderate drinking.
Cancer warning labels would also make the USA something of an outlier, as so far only South Korea mandates them. Ireland is set to introduce cancer labels in early 2026 — but they had to clear many hurdles to do so, including complaints at the European level. Twelve member states also raised concerns at the World Trade Organisation, claiming the labels might be a barrier to trade.
Senator Patrick Brazeau of Canada introduced a Bill in Canadian Parliament in 2022 to add cancer warning labels on bottles. But the Parliament was formally ended on 6th January 2025 and so he will need to re-introduce it when the new Parliament resumes.
What does Donald Trump think?
In any case, the new Trump administration may have no interest in the matter.
Indeed, President Trump told Fox News that America might need more “maître d’s, wine experts, and high-quality waiters,” as he’d found them important in his own businesses.
So although he personally is a teetotaller, he may be more sympathetic to wine sales than he’s previously let on — and not just because his son Eric Trump owns the Trump Winery in Virginia.