Drinking Causes Cancer. How Should We Talk To Teens About This?
The Surgeon General wants everyone to know how much alcohol use increases cancer risk. Here are my suggestions about how to explain this to young people.
There are two big messages in “Alcohol and Cancer Risk,” a new advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General:
Drinking alcohol increases people’s risk of developing cancer by a LOT
Most Americans don’t know much, if anything, about the link between drinking and cancer
As a health educator, I’ve been paying close attention to this report and the media coverage it’s generating, and I’ll be interested to see how much it causes people to change their behavior. I’ve also been thinking a lot about how we should incorporate these messages into conversations with teens.
What Should Adults Understand About Alcohol And Cancer?
All alcohol use increases cancer risk.
The more people drink, the more their risk of developing cancer increases.
In the U.S., there are about 20,000 alcohol-related cancer deaths annually. That means more people die from alcohol-related cancers than from alcohol-related traffic crashes.
Other countries are already taking steps to warn the public about the alcohol-cancer connection. For example, starting next year, all alcohol products sold in Ireland will be required to have an warning label that says “There is a direct link between alcohol and fatal cancers.”
In this report, the U.S. Surgeon General recommends that the U.S. roll out a similar warning label, possibly with photos.
How To Talk About This With Kids
I’m always in favor of giving young people clear, accurate information to help them make informed decisions about what they do with their bodies.
This new understandings about alcohol and cancer are important and should be incorporated into the bundle of information that we share when we talk to youth about drinking.
Should this become the primary message? I don’t think so.
In my experience, young people have a hard time making choices based on consequences that might affect them years, or even decades, down the road. When you’re 15, it’s hard to imagine that you will ever be “old enough to get cancer.”
For that reason, I think it’s important to share a few key points about this new understanding of the link between drinking and cancer in addition to other messages about alcohol’s risks, especially those that can occur immediately. They include:
Injuries—motor vehicle crashes, falls, drownings, and burns.
Violence—homicide, suicide, sexual violence, and intimate partner violence.
Alcohol poisoning—high blood alcohol levels that affect body functions like breathing and heart rate.
Overdose—from alcohol use with other drugs, like opioids.
Sexually transmitted infections or unplanned pregnancy—alcohol use can lead to sex without protection, which can cause these conditions.
Miscarriage, stillbirth, or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder — from alcohol use during pregnancy.
Make Sure Young People Understand Alcohol Facts
I’ve found that a lot of young people don’t know what public health officials mean when they say “a drink.” To understand this, teens need to actually learn a little bit about alcohol, like the difference between beer, wine, and hard liquor. It may be useful to teach them how to find the percentage of alcohol by volume (ABV) on beverage labels.
For people who are deciding to drink, understanding these difference is important in making decisions about how much to consume and which beverages to choose.
Binge Drinking Is Especially Risky for Young People
It’s important that teens understand what “binge drinking” means, and why scientists say it can be so harmful for young people. Here’s an explanation from the National Institutes of Health:
Brain development, once thought to taper off at the end of childhood, enters a unique phase during the adolescent years. Research indicates that repeated episodes of binge drinking during the teen years can alter the trajectory of adolescent brain development and cause lingering deficits in social, attention, memory, and other cognitive functions.
Don’t Believe Myths About Drinking
The film “Screenagers: Under the Influence” covers several different types of addiction, but viewers are often most surprised by the research about alcohol it includes.
In a related blog post, 3 Must Know Myths About Alcohol and Parenting, filmmaker Delaney Ruston, MD writes “While working on the documentary my film partner, Lisa, and I interviewed more than 100 parents to understand their strategies for parenting around alcohol use. There was a striking difference between parents’ answers and what the data reveals about what we should be saying and doing to help our youth make wiser decisions around alcohol.”
Author
addresses similar myths in her excellent book “The Addiction Inoculation,” and regularly shares her wisdom online. She has 170 90-second videos about preventing substance use in kids, including some that focus specifically on alcohol:How are you talking about alcohol use with the teens in your life? Leave a comment to let us know what’s going well and where you could use some support.
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Great article. I do hate that the cancer issue will not likely make a difference to teens but it is still important they know. I’ve done episodes on the drinking with parents issue and just wrote a recent article here about it. It’s a huge problem (and really blows my mind).
As a retired drinker myself, I do feel we need to get more open and honest about the dangers and adverse effects of alcohol. However, I don't think the cancer risk is the watershed moment to change everyone's behavior.
I'd like to see more discussion and research into how drastically even moderate habitual drinking impacts day to day life. Like how profoundly it impacts some of our brains and daily functions and life goals.