What if alcohol warning labels told the truth?
Here's my version, which makes it clear that booze is way more than a carcinogen and a pregnancy no-no.
Hi cacti,
In January, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a report recommending that warning labels on alcohol should include the risk of cancer.
I’m all for that. After all, we’re in the middle of a silenced epidemic. Silenced because of the chokehold the alcohol industry has on this country. Alcohol marketers use limbic capitalism to hook us, while they lobby hard against regulation—even infilitrating government research to create bad science that makes us think alcohol is “good” for us. Industry knows all too well that it’s the heaviest drinkers that drive the big profits.1
However, does adding a detail about cancer risk really go far enough? After reading the report, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head: What would an accurate alcohol warning label look like? (It’s also time to change up the font/design, as I think we’ve all become blind to the current labeling.)
So I jumped on Canva and started toying around. Yes, my creation screams homemade, but I don’t have a budget for this newsletter. It’s a labor of love, driven by the fact that I—like many of us—have a family member struggling with alcohol and I feel powerless to help:
If you like it, please feel free to share. You can right-click and download, or restack, or repost, or whatever.
Note: One of the few U.S. organizations I can find that’s working on system-wide solutions (e.g., advertising regulations, stricter %ABV controls, higher taxes) seems to be Alcohol Justice, so I included them. If you know of another organization advocating for broad systemic changes that relieve pressure on our healthcare and criminal justice systems, please let me know.
(P.S. I also would add a nutrition label on all alcohol, including and especially spirits.)
*80 percent of alcohol sales go to the 20 percent of customers who are the heaviest users, a data point shared in the book “The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business” by historian David T. Courtwright.
What a GREAT label! This is beautiful!
You've tackled a tough one, Joy, but the label looks great, so you should be proud. I think alcohol addiction is considered normal and no one wants to hear that imbibing from time to time is going to lead to any darker consequences. I don't drink (except rarely, a beer at dinner) and have never been a drinker, so this is where I'm coming from, so you don't think I'm talking about me. Hahaha. But yeah, folks just don't want to know, kind of like cigarettes.