Study: Light Drinkers Have Lower Risk of Death from Cancer than Abstainers; Heavy Drinkers, More

Someone who has less than three drinks a week is less likely to die from cancer than someone who abstains, a just-released study by researchers with Weill Cornell Medicine and funded by the National Institutes of Health finds.

But it also finds that compared to nondrinkers, heavy drinkers – women who consumed more than eight drinks per week and men who had more than 15 – had an increased risk of cancer mortality.

As for moderate drinking (four to seven drinks a week for women, four to 14 for men), the study found no association with cancer mortality.

The findings appear to contradict the position of the World Health Organization that no amount of alcohol is safe and "risk to the drinker's health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage."

The study began in 2004-2007. It involved 26,694 participants whose mean age was 64.4 years; 42% were male, 42% non-Hispanic Black and lasted an average of 13.3 years.

The study said that in 2025, more than 2 million people were expected to be diagnosed with cancer, and about 620,000 were expected to die from it.

A 2024 national study found that 40% of cancer cases and 44% of cancer deaths were attributed to four modifiable factors – cigarette smoking, excess body weight, poor diet, and physical inactivity.

Of these, cigarette smoking was the most significant, responsible for 20% of cancer cases and 30% of cancer deaths, followed by obesity (8% and 7%, respectively), and then alcohol consumption, responsible for 5% of cancer cases and 4% of cancer deaths.

"Enthusiasm for addressing alcohol as a significant risk has gained significant attention," the study noted. Citing both the U.S. Surgeon General's advisory and two studies, one of which was the basis for the Surgeon General's advisory, the Weill-Cornell researchers said:

"However, the basis for these recommendations suffered from substantial limitations."

The Weill Cornell study encouraged "cancer prevention strategies to step away from isolating single health behaviors and consider holistic perspectives of an individual's lifestyle including physical activity, smoking, diet and alcohol consumption.

The researchers noted a limitation of their paper was that they did not differentiate by cancer type, and cautioned that “While light-to-moderate drinking may appear neutral or even protective in certain analyses, we caution against interpreting alcohol consumption as beneficial for cancer outcomes.” 

This study, Reevaluating the Alcohol–Cancer Link: Long-Term Cancer Mortality Outcomes in the REGARDS Study, which was published online by the Journal of General Internal Medicine, adds to the body of evidence that demonstrates the complex nature of cancer and its relationship with alcohol.

A 2024 study by the National Academies of Science, Engineering & Medicine concluded that, compared with never consuming alcohol, moderate alcohol consumption is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, but it did not find such associations for other types of cancer.

The NASEM report also concluded that moderate alcohol consumption is associated with lower risks of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease, compared to never consuming alcohol.