Call for more health warnings on alcohol

Medical experts are calling for alcohol to come with similar warning labels as cigarette packaging, but the alcohol industry says Australians already understand the risks.

Queensland Alcohol and Drug Research director Jake Najman says alcoholic beverages should come with health warnings labels, similar to cigarette packages. Picture: Peter Wallis

Medical experts are calling for ­alcohol to come with similar warning labels as cigarettes, saying there is currently “no punishment for killing people”, but the alcohol industry says Australians already understand the risks.

After the National Health and Medical Research Council released new guidelines on Tuesday reducing the advised number of standard drinks a week from 14 to 10, medical experts called for Australians to be made more aware about the health risks of alcohol.

About 6000 Australians die each year due to alcohol-related causes, and Queensland Alcohol and Drug Research director Jake Najman called for alcohol packaging and advertising to properly inform consumers, citing research that revealed people were unaware about long-term risks.

“Alcohol causes eight different kinds of cancer, such as breast cancer in women,” he said. “It causes, at high quantities, heart disease and leads to, or is associated with, a whole lot of industrial and occupational injuries of people who are working while intoxicated — and I’m not even going to talk about drink driving.

“We have all of these negative things that can occasionally happen. In Australia, we don’t put them (the health risks) on a bottle. We don’t warn the consumer. We don’t have informed consumers.”

With bottles of alcohol in the US already carrying health warnings, Dr Najman said he didn’t believe it was out of the question for Australia to do the same but, like the fight over tobacco, alcohol companies had no interest in ­regulating themselves.

“Clearly, these companies are continuing to promote their products despite the fact that they know it kills people — same companies, selling the same product,” he said.

“So let’s go to the alcohol companies. Are they likely to behave differently? Why would they behave differently? Their job is to sell a product, and if the product kills people they’re not actually losing any money, except for a small number that die.

“There’s no penalty or punishment for killing people by selling them a product that is deadly.”

Although labels on alcohol warning against drinking while pregnant became mandatory in June, Dr Najman said regulators had picked “low-hanging fruit”, with the number of deaths related to foetal alcohol syndrome comparatively small compared to people who get cancer.

Alcohol Beverages Australia chief executive Andrew Wilsmore said there was already a “lot of information” on the label.

“We’re not downplaying it; we’ve known that alcohol is a carcinogen for a long time,” he said.

“Our industry makes that information available on a number of websites … it’s relatively easy to find. It’d be highly questionable whether that information needs to be further displayed.”