Alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States, following tobacco and obesity. While 90 percent of Americans know tobacco causes cancer, fewer than half realize alcohol does as well. Like tobacco warnings, alcohol warning labels would help consumers make more informed health choices.
While I’m in favor of adding a label, I don’t think it would change much of anything. If you’re really health conscious, you probably don’t drink already and most other people would presumably say stuff like “everything causes cancer these days” or “my grandfather drinks daily and look how healthy he is”.
If I remember correctly, even putting NSFW warning images on cigarettes didn’t do much.
Labels work, but they’re not a cure-all.
Ask why police don’t track the number of arrestees who are intoxicated. On the rare occasions (1998) it was tracked it was like 40%. And that’s just alcohol.
I’d much rather force manufacturers to use plain packaging (white label + black text in a standard font). Make it look as boring as possible with large warnings. Colors and branding have a very significant effect on sales - why else would labels have designs?
It will certainly also make it seem less normalized for children. Right now alcohol packaging is hardly distinct from some soft drinks.
Not only were health warnings self‐identified as an important source of health information about smoking, but also an effective means of communicating health information. The results provide evidence at both the individual and country‐level that health warnings on cigarette packages are strongly associated with health knowledge.
…
his pattern is best illustrated in the case of smokers’ knowledge of impotence. Canada was the only country where packages carry warnings about impotence, and accordingly, Canadian smokers were almost three times more likely than smokers from the other three countries to believe that smoking causes impotence.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2593056/#sec14
Honestly, blah blah blah I don’t think it would change much of anything blah blah blah is just really silly. The information is out there, why not look at it?
I never questioned the effectiveness in terms of teaching the consumer. As I’ve said, I’m in favor of that and it’s great.
However, people tend to continue their consumtion despite better knowledge. At least I remember this being the case with cigarettes. So it does almost nothing for the general health of your population. As others already mentioned, plain labels, a ban on marketing and similar actions are probably far more effective.
Provide evidence and I will read it.
I am not interested in baseless claims that may or may not be relevant.
Fun fact: while all the other packages have gory images on them, the “smoking causes impotence” ones show a floppy cigarette
Seems like a decent high-level overview, but would have appreciated some hard numbers and details to back it up. For example, what type of cancer does it typically cause? Esophageal? What is the prevalence on a population level?
If the plan is disgusting shock images on anything, for any reason, fuck off.
Stop traumatizing people on purpose. A good cause is no excuse.
Hello
Hello, I would like a ĝin and tonic please.
Certainly! Can I see some ID? And also please look at this picture of a diseased stomach for 5 seconds…
Fine. Can I have this box of about 20L of apple juice cartons and 5KG of honey? Oh yeah, and some yeast. Thanks.
Give it a few weeks to ferment and you have some way higher ABV hooch and at a fraction of the cost because you don’t have to pay alcohol tax on it. I have almost thought about buying bulk apple juice but at around £400 for 1m³ of it is a little much. I need to find more scrumpy drinkers first and we can pool our resources together.
Why would you ruin perfectly good apple juice with alcohol.
Sir, this is a bar.
