Recently, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for warning labels to put on alcoholic beverages, citing recent studies that show a link between alcohol use and multiple forms of cancer. This link was sometimes found even in people who only drank moderately. These recent findings fly in the face of the oft repeated belief that some drinking can be good for you, which was based on some other recent studies that were trumpeted by the media and have now been called into question. Murthy's call for common sense warning labels may go unheeded considering just how rich and powerful alcohol companies are, but I think it's a good idea. As Dr. Ernest Hawk, the vice president and head of the division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences at the University of Texas recently put it, “There is no safe level of alcohol when it comes to cancer risk.”
It seems to me that one of the problems with alcohol consumption in this country is that the deadly possible effects of alcohol are often downplayed because it's legal. The linking of heavy drinking and good times, from margaritas at brunch to downing shots after work, has lead to the belief, (wrongful in my opinion) that heavy drinking is an acceptable stress reliever. Now, I would never in a million years say that prohibition should be brought back, but I do think Americans should take a long hard look at our alcohol consumption, which not surprisingly spiked upward during the pandemic and has remained stubbornly high ever since.
On a personal note, I've always hated the bitter, acidic taste of alcohol. I've only been drunk twice in my life, and the horrific hangovers I faced afterwards pushed me into giving it up entirely. I don't miss it all, and I haven't had a drink in over thirty years. I also hate what alcohol did to my father, who lost years of his life because of a long running drinking problem.
But on a less personal note, I also hate what alcohol has done to the world: hundreds of thousands of people all around the world die from alcohol poisoning or cirrhosis of the liver every year. And then there are the thousands of people who die in car accidents involving drunk drivers, not to mention the untold thousands of people who are hurt or killed by drunken people engaging in violent behavior that they probably never would have done in the first place if they were sober (there's a reason why we refer to an "alcohol fueled rage".) Remember that alcohol is also a physically addictive drug that causes addicts to shake in agony when they try to quit. It may be legal, but it's seriously dangerous.
Do I think that the US can be convinced to cut back on drinking? Yes, because there is a precedent: tobacco use. Although tobacco still kills hundreds of thousands of people in this country every year, the number of tobacco users is far lower than it used to be: according to the American Lung Association, in 1965 over forty percent of Americans used tobacco products, while the current rate is a mere eleven percent. That decline didn't happen because tobacco was made illegal, it happened because the American people were shown the dangers of tobacco use, and millions of them wisely decided to quit or never start. A similar system should be put in place to get Americans to start drinking less. It's for the best.
