The US Surgeon General’s alcohol advisory may be a blow to wine

The US surgeon general has entered the controversial debate about alcohol and health – and it could be another blow to a California wine industry in crisis.

On Friday, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy that alcohol is third leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States, after tobacco and obesity, and can increase the risk of at least seven types of cancer, including cancer of the breast, esophagus, liver and mouth. Alcohol is “a well-established, preventable cause of cancer” for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States, he continued.

The advice follows a 230-page report published last week by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), which concluded that moderate drinkers have a lower risk of death and cardiovascular disease than people who do not drink at all. This report linked drinking to a small increase in the risk of breast cancer, but no other cancers.

These conflicting messages come as wine is experiencing a historic decline in sales. Public perception of alcohol has changed dramatically in recent years, fueled by a series of scientific reports refuting long-held American beliefs that moderate drinking is a healthy habit and that a glass of wine a day reduces the risk of heart disease. According to Gallup polls, 39% of Americans believe that moderate alcohol consumption is bad for you – up from 22% in 2005 – and younger generations have compared alcohol consumption to smoking. Last year, the World Health Organization declared that no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health.

Some scientists and doctors were quick to point out the mixed message between the two reports.

“The surgeon general is right — a lot of people don’t know that there’s a link between heavy drinking and cancer risk. But there’s also this cardiovascular protection,” said Dr. Laura Catena, who works for her family’s winery, Argentina’s Catena Zapata, and also practiced emergency medicine for 26 years at UC San Francisco. “What’s a person to do? If your only concern is cancer, you should probably stop drinking. But more people are dying from heart disease.”

There’s also a notable difference between the two, according to Catena: “(NASEM) only looked at never drinkers versus moderate drinkers. The surgeon is talking about all drinking,” she said. “We consume a lot of things where small doses are safe , and high doses are not.”

Wine publicist Gino Colangelo, founder of the firm Colangelo & Partners, criticized the surgeon general’s statement for omitting the NASEM data, calling it “one-sided” and “incomplete.” Still, he argued, the surgeon general’s advisory has already received much more attention than the NASEM report.

The timing of the reports is particularly noteworthy, and they could have major implications for the future of the alcohol industry: This year, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines will be updated, and for the first time since 1980, it may include a reduction in the volume of alcohol that the government deems safe. Currently, guidelines say one drink a day is safe for women and two drinks a day is safe for men. A reduction is likely to worsen the wine industry’s struggles.

“It becomes embedded in the psyche,” said Colangelo, who is particularly concerned about how a change in guidelines might affect younger consumers. “I always think to myself: Why do I stop at two glasses of wine a night? I almost never go for a third, and that’s because for 40 years I’ve heard that two drinks a day for men is safe.”

The $260 billion U.S. alcohol industry has fought this potential reduction, alleging a lack of transparency and the potential for bias in the process. The debate has centered on the creation of an advisory panel that is a subcommittee of a group called the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Mindage Drinking, or ICCPUD. Critics argue that a group that focuses on minors is not qualified to conduct research on adult alcohol use. Many members of Congress have sided with the alcohol industry in a series of letters sent to the heads of the federal agencies that oversee the review of the Dietary Guidelines.

It is unclear whether the surgeon general’s warning will affect the guidelines, but his advice stated that for certain cancers the risk may start to rise around one drink or fewer a day. Murphy recommends “a reassessment of the guideline limits for alcohol consumption to account for cancer risk” and to raise awareness by updating the surgeon general’s health warning label on alcoholic beverages.

However, the NASEM report was commissioned by Congress to inform the Dietary Guidelines.

Colangelo hopes the surgeon general’s warning inspires the wine industry, which has been slow to sound the alarm about the updated dietary guidelines, to take action. “I think for so many years wine companies have been understandably reluctant to advocate for their own product because we are such a litigious society that companies are risk-averse,” he said. “On the positive side, I think it will energize the wine industry to act.”

Reach Jess Lander: [email protected]