Calls to put health-warning labels on alcohol products sold in B.C. have been renewed in the wake of a recent report from the U.S. Surgeon General.
That report, released last month, states that at no level is alcohol safe to consume and that drinking any amount of alcohol raises the risk for various cancers.
Timothy Naimi, director of the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, supports health-warning labels on alcohol.
Others in the substance-use research industry also support warning labels. Canadian researcher Catherine Paradis of the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, for example, told the CBC earlier this month that warning labels are necessary to help Canadians be aware of the risks.
One advocate for moderate drinking, in contrast, is pushing back. Retired wine-sector lawyer Mark Hicken published a long and detailed blog post critiquing the U.S. Surgeon General's report. He is open that he has no medical training.
Some health advocates have long lobbied for alcoholic products to carry health warnings that would resemble those that don cigarette packages: Large scary images and clear text linking drinking with cancer. Former Island Health chief medical health officer Richard Stanwick was advocating for health labels on alcohol when BIV spoke with him in 2018.
Naimi, who is also a professor at UVIC's School of Public Health and Social Policy, wants the labels to be on alcohol products "not just in B.C., but across Canada.”
He said having health-warnings on alcohol products would make alcohol labelling consistent with labelling for other food and beverage products in Canada.
“It’s more efficient for [health warnings] to just be on the label put on by producers, but that would be a decision for regulators were it to come to pass," he said.
Alcohol product labels today do not need to include lists of ingredients, which is required for food items, he said.
Labels could also note suggested serving sizes, he added.
If the Canadian government does not mandate that alcohol producers need to put health information on labels, another option for the warning labels on alcoholic products would be for the provincial government to do what the Yukon did in a 2018 pilot project.
Liquor store staff in that territory manually stuck warning labels on bottles.
Advocates for that approach, however, are likely to face an uphill battle convincing B.C.’s NDP government.
B.C. Premier David Eby was the province’s attorney general in summer 2018, when he went to the Yukon to view the project.
He told BIV at the time that he did not see value in requiring liquor retailers in B.C. to manually place warning stickers on products because it would represent a “significant cost” to those businesses.
“We’ve got no plans currently around warning labels [on alcoholic beverages],” Eby told BIV in 2018.
That has not changed.
B.C.’s Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General sent an email to BIV saying that its “Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch is not currently considering drafting policy that would require liquor retailers to place warning stickers on products.”
B.C. Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry declined an interview request and did not send a comment on the matter.
She co-owns the Clos du Soleil winery in B.C.’s Keremeos region.
Moderate-drinking advocates question U.S. Surgeon General’s report
Hicken years ago founded and was executive director at the Canadian Alliance for Responsible Drinking.
While that group is no longer active, he continues to advocate for moderate drinking.
Hicken formerly specialized in wine law, and he is a past chair of the Vancouver International Wine Festival.
Hicken told BIV the U.S Surgeon General’s report is flawed and pointed specifically to an infographic suggesting that higher alcohol consumption increases the risk of alcohol-related cancers.
That infographic was based on a single Australian study, Hicken said. The full report has dozens of footnotes.
“If you're going to advocate for liquor policy changes, I think you need to have a pretty broad consensus from the scientific community,” he said.
“Putting out risk numbers and justifying what you're asking for on the basis of risk calculations which are based on a single study I don't think is appropriate.”
He then critiqued the Australian study because it disproportionally included people in rural areas. That, he said, could lead to various confounding variables that make the study less reliable, he said.
Further, Hicken said, the U.S. Surgeon General report claims that the Australian study had findings that it did not actually have.
“The U.S. Surgeon General says there's a certain risk level for people who drink 14 drinks a week but in the Australian study, when you look at the table, those risk levels are for a group of people who were drinking a median level of 21 drinks a week,” Hicken said.
He has other concerns about studies that link alcohol and cancer, such as that they are based on self-reporting subjects who may under-report drinking habits. Those who regularly drink alcohol to excess may also have other common habits, separate from those who do not, he said.
Naimi dismissed Hicken’s concerns.
“There's a consistent body of scientific evidence, and it's not particularly controversial,” he said of evidence that drinking alcohol causes cancer.
“I've been working in this field for 20 years. There are thousands of studies on alcohol and health.”
