15 words It is disrupting the global alcohol industry.
From 2026, beer, wine and liquor containers sold in Ireland will carry two warnings: “There is a direct link between alcohol and deadly cancer'' and “Drinking alcohol causes liver disease.'' The law requires that a label be affixed in red capital letters with the following information: ”
The requirement, signed into law last year, is backed by decades of scientific research and goes far beyond any country that has previously communicated the health risks of alcohol consumption. This has sparked fierce opposition from the alcohol industry around the world, but has also prompted calls for similar measures in some other countries.
“This is an important step,” said Dr. Timothy Naimi, director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria. “People who drink alcohol should have the same right to basic information about alcohol as they do about other foods and drinks.”
According to the Bangkok Post, the Thai government is in the final stages of drafting regulations that would require alcohol products to carry graphic images with warnings such as “Alcoholic beverages may cause cancer.” That's what it means.
A bill has been introduced in Canada's parliament that would require all alcoholic beverages to be labeled with a statement that states “a direct causal relationship between alcohol consumption and the development of deadly cancer.”
The Alaska Legislature last week held a committee hearing on a bill that would require alcohol businesses to post signs with cancer warnings.
Norway, which already strictly regulates the sale of alcohol, is developing proposals to introduce cancer warning labels. “I think we are likely to do something similar,” said Ireland's Secretary of State, Ole Henrik Clat Bjorkholt, in an interview, who has been following Ireland's efforts with great interest.
Ireland has been a pioneer in developing proactive public health policies. In 2004, it became the first country to ban smoking in indoor workplaces, including bars and restaurants, a policy that has since been adopted by more than 70 countries. Mandating warning labels for alcohol could be the start of a similar change in the way drinks are packaged, and could be a way to raise awareness about the dangers of drinking. Even if the amount is small.
long battle
The evidence linking alcohol and cancer is well established. In 1988, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that alcohol is carcinogenic to humans. Decades of research since then, including studies on breast, liver, colorectal, and esophageal cancers, have only strengthened that conclusion. In November, the WHO and IARC declared in a joint statement that “a safe level of alcohol consumption for cancer cannot be established.”
Despite this, the relationship between alcohol and cancer is largely unknown. In the United States, a recent national survey found that about one in three Americans are aware that drinking alcohol increases their risk of cancer.
A recent study found that only a quarter of countries around the world require some kind of health warning regarding alcohol, and the wording that is required is generally imprecise. The last time the U.S. changed its warning labels was in 1989, when it introduced language encouraging drinking during pregnancy and before driving or operating heavy machinery, noting that alcohol “may cause health problems.” “Yes,” he vaguely admitted.
Sheila Gilheaney says it took more than a decade for Ireland's labeling requirements to become a reality. The chief executive of advocacy group Alcohol Action Ireland described the bill as “the most contentious piece of legislation in Ireland's history”. He said the initiative began in 2012, when a steering group assigned to address the country's high alcohol-related mortality rate recommended a number of measures, including warning labels.
Although many of the recommendations were watered down by the 2018 law, the labeling requirements passed intact. It took another four years for lawmakers to develop the specific language and design needed.
As these details were finalized, liquor companies stepped up their protests. In late 2022, a group of Europe's major alcohol exporting countries argued that the Irish label interferes with free trade and is inappropriate or disproportionate to the objective of reducing the harms of alcohol. A formal objection was filed with the Commission.
When the committee raised no objections, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani called Ireland's proposal an “attack on the Mediterranean diet.” Label language “doesn't take into account the difference between moderate drinking and alcohol abuse,” he says. said on Twitter.
Industry-coordinated opposition
The alcohol industry is fighting on multiple fronts to prevent Ireland's labeling requirements from coming into force. At World Trade Organization committee meetings held in June and November, industry groups and 11 alcohol exporting countries, including the United States, expressed concern, questioning the scientific validity of cancer warnings and It argued that the label violated free trade.
In comments submitted to the World Trade Organization, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States called the label “inaccurate” and “misleading.” The organization also said that as part of a parallel effort to fight cancer in the European Union, where the alcohol industry has proven to have a greater influence, “this important public health objective is best managed. “I'll do it,” he suggested.
The European Commission was due to propose alcohol health warning text as part of its plan to beat cancer by the end of 2023, but the deadline was missed. In December, over the objections of the World Health Organization, the European Parliament rejected the need for warning labels and instead approved a report calling for information on “moderate and responsible drinking.”
In the final report, the authors repeatedly diluted language about alcohol's role in disease, limiting the scope of the warning to “harmful” or “excessive.” of consumption.
size and design
Cormac Healy, director of industry group Drinks Ireland, said the group was not entirely opposed to the health warnings. But he said the mandated label size was impractical for use on small products, picking up a 50-milliliter bottle on his desk to demonstrate. And the warning itself was “disproportionate and inaccurate” and was primarily intended to scare people, he said.
“Labels can't really inform or educate,” he added.
In the United States, alcohol warning labels are typically placed on the back of bottles and cans and blend in with other graphic elements. Marissa Hall, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said labels that are front-facing and include images or icons are more effective at catching a buyer's eye. . And we featured one of our rotating groups of short messages.
Dr. Hall recently received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to test the impact of more powerful design features. When she tells her friends about her research, many will be surprised to learn that the United States doesn't mandate warning labels at all, she says, because existing warning labels go easily unnoticed. she said.
“They don't know anything,” she said.
Professor Paula O'Brien, from the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Law, said several countries had proposed stronger alcohol warning labels in the past 15 years, but each had been met with fierce opposition. In 2010, Thailand proposed requiring a series of circulating warnings accompanied by color graphic images. O'Brien called this “the high water mark for alcohol labeling.” But the measure stalled at the World Trade Organization after other countries raised concerns that the label would curb free trade.
In 2016, South Korea overcame similar opposition to mandate a set of warning labels that alcohol manufacturers could choose from on their products. Some of these include links between alcohol and cancer.
Research on this topic is also controversial. In 2017, Yukon Territory, a sparsely populated region in northwestern Canada, introduced brightly colored warning labels and partnered with scientists to test their impact. One of the warning labels included the phrase “Alcohol may cause cancer.” However, after alcohol industry groups complained, the local government suspended the study because it could not afford to fight, fearing it would face litigation.
“We were a little surprised by the strength of the response,” said Dr. Erin Hobin, a scientist with Public Health Ontario who led the project in Yukon.
When the researchers restarted the study a few months later, omitting the cancer warning, they found that people who bought alcoholic beverages with the label were still more likely to notice the message and drink less. It was reported that Sales of labeled products also decreased by approximately 7% between the intervention and the subsequent months.
Most importantly, as drinkers become more informed about the link between alcohol and cancer, they also become more likely to support policies that control the availability, pricing, and marketing of alcohol, thereby increasing the The amount has been shown to decrease further, Dr. Hobin said.
If the alcohol industry were to dissuade the European Union from adopting warning labels, Ireland would become isolated and out of harmony with European law.that Dr Olly Bartlett, assistant professor of law at Maynooth University in Ireland, said this could ultimately provide grounds for challenging the labeling requirements in Irish courts. But he said such an initiative was unlikely to become widespread as Ireland's alcohol warning labels were “aligned with the objective of protecting public health”.
Officials say further action by the European Union is unlikely until after parliamentary elections this summer. And there is no sign that Ireland will back away from its promise to make labels mandatory from May 2026.
Dr. Gauden Galea, a strategic adviser to the World Health Organization, said he was confident broader labeling efforts would ultimately be successful. The 63-year-old added that he is old enough to remember how tobacco companies used to advertise on the front pages of newspapers.
Ultimately, “people probably don't remember a time when we needed warnings about pesticides, but when unlabeled carcinogens like alcohol could be sold with impunity.'' “Sho,” he hopes.
