Dr. Vivek Murthy:
Well, I think there certainly needs to be much more public awareness.
And I think that what we need to think about is how the overall impact of alcohol in our health should factor into decisions about how we encourage alcohol consumption. And this is, by the way, not just a regulatory matter.
I think, from a cultural perspective, I think we also have to think about the messages that we send to people through movies, through books, through other media, that alcohol, for example, is the right way to deal with stress, or that it’s the right way to deal with anxiety.
And, look, I hear from people who sometimes say, well, this is just something that I need to cope with a very difficult time. And, listen, I get that. We live in stressful times, and there’s a lot of difficult things happening in people’s lives. And when you hear data like we put out today that alcohol causes cancer, it’s an inconvenient, although important, truth.
But I think that a lot of that has to shift. And what I do want people to know, individuals, is that less alcohol consumption leads to less cancer risk. And so if you’re drinking one or two times a week, that’s likely significantly safer from a cancer risk perspective than drinking one or two times a day.
