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The drinks maker’s shares fell after the US surgeon general said alcoholic beverages should carry a warning to raise awareness of their link to cancer.
The US government’s chief medical officer released a public health report on Friday advisory stating that alcohol consumption is the third leading cause of preventable cancer in the US behind tobacco and obesity.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said Congress should approve updated cancer risk labels on alcoholic beverages, among other actions that could reduce related cancers in the US.
The advice and recommendations echo public health efforts aimed at the tobacco industry over the past decades, which have led to dramatic declines in smoking.
Stocks of alcohol on both sides of the Atlantic sold off after Friday’s advisory, sending share prices of several brewery and distillery owners down more than 2 percent. At the bottom end, Rémy Cointreau fell 5 percent, while New York-listed shares of Boston Beer closed nearly 4 percent lower.
In the 1980s, alcohol was first classified as a group 1 carcinogen — meaning it causes cancer in humans — by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Murthy said the evidence for a link between alcohol and cancer has grown stronger over time, and that for some cancers, such as breast, mouth and throat cancer, the risk begins to rise when people have one or fewer drinks a day.
The World Health Organization issued guidelines in 2022 according to which there is no safe amount of alcohol consumption that does not affect health. In a statement in the medical journal The Lancet Public Health, the agency said the latest data showed that half of all alcohol-attributable cancers were caused by light or moderate drinking, defined as the equivalent of less than one and a half liters of wine, three and a half liters of beer or 450 ml of spirits per week.
The surgeon general said that less than half of all Americans are aware that drinking alcohol increases the risk of developing cancer. Awareness was far greater about the increased risk of radiation, tobacco and asbestos, the advisory said.
While many countries, including the US, require alcoholic beverages to be labeled with some health warnings, such as the risks of drinking to pregnant women, few specifically warn consumers about the increased risk of cancer. Ireland and South Korea have put cancer warnings on alcoholic drinks in recent years.
Alcohol can cause cancer by damaging DNA, increasing inflammation, or changing hormone levels like estrogen. It can also make it easier for other carcinogens like tobacco smoke to be absorbed into the body.
