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"The red wine myth has had a good run, but it's time to update the narrative," concludes investor, author and US Alcohol Policy Alliance board member Cecily Mak in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed this week. The "myth" she works to bust is the famed claim that a little bit of drinking, especially wine (and red wine in particular) is beneficial to health. Views about moderate drinking are changing, she acknowledges, while "wine is still insulated." But her timing was awkward. The piece debuted just a few days after new research touted by the American College of Cardiology found that moderate drinkers who consumed wine experienced better health outcomes than folks consuming a comparable amount of spirits, beer or cider. At the same time, Mak peddles a few other narratives in need of updating.Moderate Wine Drinkers Better Off than Abstainers, UK-Based Study Shows While Mak presents it as a "myth," the new paper found clear differences between drinkers of wine and other forms of alcohol. A brief summary of the findings, found in a press release from the American College of Cardiology (ACC), elicited a ton of press. The full paper is not yet available. But the abstract of a study analyzing a sample of over 340,000 middle-aged adults from the UK is striking enough.Researchers classified moderate alcohol consumption as about 1.5 to 3 drinks per day for men (20-40 grams of ethanol) and about half that for women. Folks at that consumption level who also said they drank wine saw a 21% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those who never drank or only drank occasionally, ACC's press release summarizes. Consuming a similar amount of spirits, beer or cider, on the other hand, was linked to a 9% higher risk. Yet "spirits, beer and cider are more likely to be consumed outside of meals and were associated with lower overall diet quality and other lifestyle risk factors" when compared to wine, authors note, which could impact results despite efforts to correct for these complications.The study is limited by its observational nature and still depends on self-reported drinking at just a single point in time. But it does correct for other alleged "problems" with similar studies by comparing consistent drinkers to "never" and occasional drinkers. Indeed, researchers highlight that heavy drinkers (over 1.5 drinks per day for women and 3 for men) were significantly more likely to experience negative health effects compared to never or occasional drinkers. They were "24% more likely to die from any cause, 36% more likely to die from cancer and 14% more likely to die from heart disease." Yet the release is silent on the comparison of light/moderate drinkers to never/occasional drinkers in total. (We'll be on the lookout for the full paper to check if these researchers, like so many before them, also found evidence of a J-curve.)Cancer Awareness Up Significantly Since Surgeon General's Advisory Back in her Chronicle op-ed, Mak makes the case for cancer warnings on alcohol labels, repeating the familiar (if dated) data-point that "only 40% of Americans know about this link." Like other anti-industry advocates, she simultaneously clings to that 2.5-year-old statistic as well as the early 2025 Surgeon General's Advisory designed to change it. And here too, the timing is unfortunate.Last week, a survey with data points before and after the advisory suggested a 16-point swing in awareness from fall of 2024 to the following February. Back in September 2024, 40% of adults believed that "regular" alcohol consumption increased cancer risk, according to the Annenberg Science and Public Health Surveys from the University of Pennsylvania. Just a few months later, headlines about alcohol's link to cancer reached many more folks after former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy published his late-term advisory on the topic. Just a month later, the Annenberg survey found a big jump in awareness to 56% of respondents. Last month, a year later, over half of adults continue to believe that alcohol "increases your chances of later developing cancer."Instead, Mak focuses more attention on her personal experience while undergoing breast cancer treatment in 2023, during which doctors didn't ask her any questions about her alcohol consumption, she says. The discussion also includes another go-to line for public health advocates, explaining that alcohol is a "Group 1 carcinogen, like radiation and tobacco." Those common, oft-derided examples get all the glory. But other members of the group include processed meat, air pollution, wood dust and a variety of estrogen therapies.Seeking Warning Labels Amid "Major Cultural Shift," Consumption Declines Mak bemoans that "nothing has changed" since the 2024 Surgeon General's Advisory. So just add mandatory cancer warnings on alcohol labels to the list of things Congress hasn't done in the past year. Fellow supporters of the pro-warning label position are "not advocating for abstinence; we argue that actual choice requires accurate information," Mak explains. "The solution here is not prohibition or shame, it is meaningful informed consent," in her view.Yet fellow leaders of the USAPA and similar advocate organizations cozy up mighty close to neoprohibitionism even if they don't openly embrace the term. And Mak also takes the opportunity to echo what is perhaps the most frequent refrain among advocates: comparing the alcohol industry to tobacco. "Similarly, alcohol companies use delay, ambiguity and personal choice to resist regulation" and "to slow shifts in perception," Mak argues. As usual, the argument dodges any comparison of the relative risks of drinking, which are nowhere near as severe as smoking, especially for cancer.Like other advocates, Mak gets by another disconnect by simply pretending it doesn't exist. Just two paragraphs after claiming that "most consumers lack some of the most basic information" about alcohol's health impacts, she acknowledges that "younger generations drink less, and Dry January is now mainstream." Right on cue, she turns to the oft-cited Gallup poll results showing the lowest prevalence of adult drinking "in 90 years." Mak even touts "the alcohol-free beverage market" some anti-industry advocates deride as a gateway for teens, pointing out folks turn to those options as "a health consideration with tradeoffs, not a moral issue tied to addiction or abstinence."Mak may not connect the dots between declining consumption and her preferred policy solutions for the same reason most major anti-industry advocates remain silent about the huge strides in reducing teen consumption in the last couple of decades. All of that has happened without enacting additional, "population-level" policies that raise the price and limit the availability and promotion of alcohol.This advocate is not alone in skirting this particular disconnect. It's similarly apparent in a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health post that Mak links to and that serves as a sort of template for her op-ed. Published last November, it includes a laundry list of public health talking points on alcohol. "Alcohol use in the US has been in decline since the late 1970s," the post kicks off, citing a "major cultural shift" at the current moment. But such changes undermine the argument that price, place and promotion policies are as necessary as these advocates claim. So do the results of another study published this week, finding that a one-minute video sharply raised awareness about alcohol and cancer with "a relatively short and cost-effective message."(Sidebar: the Bloomberg School post closes with a discussion of federal drinking guidance. Like most voices from public health, it furthers confusion about "Canadian guidance." And although these advocates love to hate the new, more bare-bones US Dietary Guidelines, the post's title basically summarizes that guidance: "For Better Health, Drink Less Alcohol.")In the context of consumption shifts, Mak's targeting of red wine in the SF Chronicle is particularly ironic. Of all alcohol beverage types, wine has suffered the steepest declines in recent years. Perhaps the so-called "wine myth" lives stronger in the imaginations of public health advocates than it does in the minds of the public.Cheers,

New Study Reinforces So-Called "Wine Myth" as Advocate Op-Ed Aims to Bust It

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