[Reporter] It's not a secret but it may as well be.
Alcohol any amount of alcohol can cause cancer.
I did not know that.
This is like the first time I'm hearing about it.
I didn't know that, cancer's scary.
[Reporter] The truth is scary, alcohol is a level one carcinogen
right up there with tobacco and asbestos.
It's one of the top three causes of preventable cancer.
So, why aren't Canadians being warned about it?
There's a lot of misinformation out there bottom line is we're in the dark
and the industry likes it that way.
[Reporter] Tim Stockwell is a scientist with the
Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria.
He wants people to know the truth.
We probably think alcohol is good for you in moderation and the industry has been very
strong at promoting that message.
Is there any safe amount of alcohol?
Nothing's completely safe even drinking one drink a day increases your risk of some cancers
including woman's breast cancer
but also cancers of the digestive system and the risk increases with every drink you take.
[Reporter] Kathy Andrews had no idea that the wine
she enjoyed most nights before she got pregnant was dangerous.
The Vancouver resident ran into the truth after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016.
Some of the risk factors for me was that I've been through IVF with my child
and then pregnancy as well as a stressful lifestyle and drinking not exercising enough
so all of those things I think played a role.
When you look back now how much did you know about the risk alcohol carries?
Well very little, I think there's a lot of mixed messages in the media about alcohol
it actually can be quite good for you especially for your heart.
What I discovered was that there's quite a lot of research
around the connection between alcohol and breast cancer
And what did you think when you read that?
Why don't I know this?
[Reporter] Most Canadians don't know that their cocktail should come with a cancer warning
and drinking is so normalized so celebrated the truth is hard to swallow.
Alcohol was linked to 7,000 new cancer cases in Canada in 2020 alone
and those studies that suggest drinking can be good for you, they've been debunked.
Dr Fawaad Iqbal is a radiation oncologist at the Durham Regional Cancer Center in Oshawa, Ontario.
I treat common cancers, I treat lung cancer, breast cancer, and colorectal cancers
and I've never ever had a lung cancer patient who didn't ask me
did smoking cause my cancer? Whereas breast cancer and colorectal cancer
pretty much most people don't know that alcohol causes cancer.
What do you think about that?
It's shocking I guess I would say like we have warning labels on everything I can think of.
I bought my kids fishing rods this summer
their fishing rods had warning labels that says this fishing rod can cause cancer.
Whereas you know a level one carcinogen that is everywhere has no particular warnings on us.
The CMA should advocate for explicit labeling of alcoholic beverages
warning of carcinogenic risk to the consumer.
[Reporter] Iqbal has drafted a proposal to the Canadian Medical Association
and has reached out to Ontario's liquor board provincial and federal health authorities
as well as to the Prime Minister.
Why is this so important to you?
I don't like when people are lied to including myself.
This toxin is there for everybody to consume and nobody's warning you.
Why do you think it's not out there?
Money, it boils down to money.
What do you mean?
Alcohol is a 1.5 trillion dollar a year industry, they'll lose money.
That's a heavy lobby group and money wins at the end of the day.
[Reporter] Money won in the Yukon in 2017.
This is where the first study of alcohol cancer labels was tried, but barely got tested.
Less than a month after researchers put warning labels on alcohol, spelling out the cancer risk
they came off under pressure from the alcohol industry.
There's examples of emails from the liquor industry.
[Reporter] Stockwell was one of the study leaders.
The information about cancer was alarmist and misleading,
he has the emails from industry representatives to the Yukon government
claiming the cancer labels were defamatory.
The territory, he says,
couldn't afford a costly legal battle so the cancer warning labels were pulled.
Why was the cancer word so problematic you think?
Well, I think because it's not a good image for their product.
You don't need to be a marketing expert to say it's a no-no to say
if you drink this it might give you cancer.
[Reporter] The alcohol industry continues to evade questions about the cancer risk.
We asked Beer Canada, Sspirits Canada, and Wine Growers Canada
whether they accept the link between alcohol and cancer
and whether they believe they have a responsibility to inform consumers of that risk
all three focused their answers on the need to drink responsibly and in moderation.
Spirits Canada also refer to the discredited research
of the health benefits of drinking alcohol.
Alcohol causes cancer, the truth may be
inconvenient to industry but awareness is slowly spreading.
In Australia, a graphic public health campaign lays out the cancer risk.
This one from the U.S. is a stark warning to women about the risk of breast cancer
and just before the pandemic British Columbia's Fraser Health Authority ran
posters spelling out the cancer risks to everyone.
And the Yukon study the industry tried to suppress?
It's being cited by researchers around the world
because it proves information does have an impact.
Even though the cancer labels were taken off early
people remembered them and the other labels that stayed on.
By the end of the study, alcohol sales dropped by seven percent.
Another key finding?
People were furious that this existential threat
that is masquerading as something safe and glamorous and normal
and it's slowly killing people, anyone who understands those facts would feel
there's a moral obligation on the government to tell its citizens about these risks.
[Reporter] Several European countries are considering cancer warning labels on alcohol.
We asked Health Canada if it plans to do the same.
It says it continues to fund research into the best ways to inform Canadians
of the various harms associated with alcohol use
Aand says updates to the current national low-risk drinking guidelines
and standard drink information are coming.
I make an informed choice.
Andrews says there is no time to waste.
People do need to know and I think it's a deterrent if you know.
Would it have changed anything for you?
Definitely, yes.
I would have abstained or drank a whole lot less a lot sooner.
[Reporter] She's grateful that she's recovering but she wants people to know more than she did.
It can cut their lives short and take them away from the people that love them
people putting really dangerous stuff in their bodies and they don't know and it's not worth it.
yeah, yeah it's not worth it.
[Reporter] Knowing the risks, she says, means knowing how much you're willing to risk too.
Ioanna Roumeliotis, CBC News, Vancouver.