The evidence

Alcohol and cancer risk, with and without drinking

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 20266 sources

Drinking raises your lifetime odds of the cancers alcohol causes, and the extra starts at a drink a day. In the US Surgeon General’s 2025 figures, as given by the National Cancer Institute, about 17 of 100 women who have less than one drink a week get an alcohol-related cancer. At one drink a day it’s 19, and at two it’s 22. For men it’s 10, 11 and 13.

Risk numbers are slippery. “Raises your risk by 30%” sounds terrifying and means little unless you know 30% of what. “Only 2 more in 100” sounds small, until you’re one of the 2. So this page shows both: how many people out of 100 get these cancers anyway, and how many more get them at each level of drinking.

What the chart shows

Each grid is 100 people. The violet dots are the ones who get one of these cancers even at less than a drink a week, because these cancers have other causes too. The red dots are the extra people at that level of drinking. For women, going from almost nothing to a drink a day adds 2 in 100, and two drinks a day adds 5. For men, two drinks a day adds 3.

The “alcohol-related” cancers are the ones alcohol is known to cause or raise: mouth, throat, voice box, esophagus, liver, breast and colon. Women’s numbers are higher mostly because breast cancer is on the list. These are drinks of 14 g, the US standard: 12 oz of 5% beer, 5 oz of 12% wine or 1.5 oz of spirits. A big glass of wine can be two.

It isn’t only heavy drinkers

Most people picture a heavy drinker when they hear “alcohol and cancer.” The World Health Organization’s office for Europe found that about half of the alcohol-caused cancers in its region happen in people whose drinking doesn’t count as heavy. The 2018 Global Burden of Disease study found that cancers made up 27% of alcohol-caused deaths in women aged 50 and over, and 19% in men.

In the US, NCI puts alcohol behind about 5% of all cancer cases diagnosed in 2019, nearly 100,000, and about 4% of cancer deaths, nearly 25,000.

Who has more risk

• People who flush. About 36% of East Asians turn red when they drink, mostly from a slow ALDH2 gene. Those who drink anyway have a much higher risk of esophageal cancer, 3.7 to 18 times in case-control studies. Why do I get red when I drink?
• Smokers. Alcohol helps the mouth and throat absorb the chemicals in smoke, so the two together are worse than either alone.
• Women. Breast cancer risk starts rising at about one drink a day. Breast cancer, with and without has those numbers.

What drinking less does

NCI says stopping is linked to lower risks of mouth and esophageal cancers, and possibly throat, breast and colon cancers. It can take years for the risk to come back toward a never-drinker’s, but NCI says it’s “never too late to stop drinking and reduce the risks.” Every drink you don’t have takes a little off the extra.

What we’d do

If you drink, the cheapest way to lower this risk is fewer drinks. Beer, wine and spirits all carry it, because the alcohol is the problem. If cancer runs in your family, or you flush when you drink, aim for zero. If you’re cutting back, ways to stop or cut back has what works.

Why most people don’t know

In Gallup’s 2025 poll, 53% of US adults said even moderate drinking is bad for your health, up from 28% in 2018. That’s a big shift, but it leaves almost half who don’t think so. Cancer is the risk people know least about, and how alcohol causes cancer explains the chemistry behind it.