WASHINGTON, D.C. – Last week, the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted resolutions supporting a cancer warning on alcoholic beverage labels and at point-of-sale, endorsing a downward revision of the Dietary Guidelines’ alcohol recommendations, and opposing the use of “pinkwashing” to market alcohol products. CFA Director of Food Policy Thomas Gremillion issued the following statement:
“The AMA’s resolution represents an important milestone towards common sense, consumer friendly alcohol reforms. The alcohol industry has fought hard to obscure the science around alcohol’s link to cancer. Its allies in Congress have gone so far as to harass federal research agency staff that dared to calculate estimates of just how much alcohol has contributed to the decline in our average life expectancy. But all the lobbyists in the world cannot change the fact that for cancer prevention, there is no “safe” amount of alcohol. Now, with its resolution to “promote public education about the risks between alcohol use and cancer, especially breast cancer,” America’s physicians have joined in the fight to give consumers accurate information about alcoholic beverages.
The AMA resolution specifically supports “front-of-package labeling” on alcohol that includes “appropriate acknowledgment of alcohol’s causal link to cancer and the evidence that the risk of harm increases with greater alcohol consumption,” consistent with the U.S. Surgeon General’s recent Advisory on Alcohol and Cancer Risk. Congress must ultimately amend federal law to change the warning statement on alcoholic beverage labels. However, the AMA’s resolution also endorses public policies that state and local governments can enact to educate consumers, including “clear, evidence-based point-of-sale warning signage in physical and digital retail environments where alcohol is sold.” State and local governments similarly have authority to require cancer and other health warning statements on alcohol advertising.
Alcohol advertising has become ubiquitous in recent years. Online marketing activities, ungoverned by the voluntary industry codes that apply to other media, raise particular concerns about youth exposure to alcohol-branded content, which is associated with more binge drinking and other alcohol-related risks. AMA rightly targets the lack of standards for alcohol advertising, condemning the practice of “pinkwashing” that couples alcoholic beverage marketing with breast cancer causes. Researchers have shown how “pinkwashed beer ads” lead consumers to favor certain brands and to perceive them as healthier than they otherwise would. Appropriate health warning statements on alcohol advertising would diminish the appeal of “pinkwashed” ads.