Is it time to face the facts about alcohol and cancer?

The council is now rolling out an advertising campaign on digital platforms in Victoria to promote the national alcohol guidelines, which were introduced in December and recommend that healthy men and women drink no more than 10 standard drinks per week. The campaign, named Spread, shows how alcohol can trigger cells to mutate when it spreads through the body.

It’s well-timed: there is growing buzz around cutting down on booze or going sober, with non-alcoholic drinks surging in popularity. Recent research from the Alcohol and Drug Foundation showed that one in five Australians wanted to reduce their alcohol consumption.

And Victoria has just entered its fourth lockdown – a time when some people reach more for the liquor cabinet. Surveys have found that many Australians have had more alcohol than usual during the pandemic.

“Given the past year, there’s never been a more important time to have a campaign like this,” Harper says.

Harper believes that it’s time that alcohol gets spotlighted for its cancer risk, and he hopes this is the first small step towards developing an awareness-raising campaign as successful as Quit and SunSmart.

The ad was originally made in 2010 but did not go far due to lack of funding, which Harper says was “disappointing”. It has been edited to include new messaging about the guidelines.

“We’re hoping to see government bodies invest in campaigns like this which we know are really effective in promoting people’s health,” Harper says.

Professor Kate Conigrave, a University of Sydney addiction medicine specialist, helped develop the new alcohol guidelines. She supports the call for a widespread public health campaign and believes there should also be warning labels on alcohol products.

Conigrave says she is often having to inform patients of the threat of cancer posed by alcohol.

She explains that alcohol increases the risk of getting cancer from quite low levels of drinking, and steadily rises the more you drink.

While sticking to the new guidelines doesn’t remove all risk, Conigrave says it does mean you have a less than one-in-100 chance of dying from an alcohol-related cause across your lifetime.

There are, of course, many health issues associated with alcohol consumption, but Conigrave says that cancer risk is a powerful motivator, and people are more likely to follow the guidelines with that in mind.

“We all know about cancer, we all worry about it, its one that resonates with people,” she says.

Professor Michael Boyer, an oncologist and chief clinical officer at Chris O’Brien Lifehouse in Sydney’s Camperdown, says while we talk about alcohol in relation to road safety, there has been very little discourse to do with cancer.

“It concerns me because it’s very hard to make informed lifestyle decisions if you don’t know what the information is,” Boyer says.

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Tech entrepreneur Pauline Pangan, from St Kilda in Melbourne, has been scaling back her alcohol intake for six years to support her wellbeing. Both her grandparents died of cancer, so she has been conscious of reducing her own risk.

Her busy lifestyle used to involve daily drinking, be it with clients on weeknights or out on the weekend. Today, Pangan, 38, has a maximum of five glasses a week and a full month off drinking every three months. This latest lockdown is booze-free.

That’s not to say it’s not a challenge: “I love wine. It calms my nerves after an intense day or week.”

But by drinking less, Pangan says she feels fitter, mentally sharper and more energetic, plus, it saves her money.