There's An Easy Strategy to Reduce Alcohol Intake, Scientists Say, And It Works

A method of getting people to drink less alcohol is to highlight the increased risk of cancer that comes with drinking alcohol.

The team behind the 2021 study said that this particular combo of 'why to reduce' and 'how to reduce' messaging can be useful.

Too much drinking leads to cancer. There are a lot of problems associated with overdoing it on the booze.

Simone Pettigrew from The George Institute for Global Health said that drinkers reduce the amount of alcohol they consume when they know about alcohol and cancer.

The first survey was completed by 7,995 people and the second and third surveys were completed by 4,588 and 2,687 people respectively. Different groups of people were shown different messages about drinking.

A TV ad linking booze and cancer, together with a suggestion to keep count of your drinks, was one of the most effective ways to get people to cut down on alcohol intake.

It was the only combination where people reduced their alcohol consumption.

Encouraging people to decide on a number of drinks and then stick to it did prompt some of the volunteers to try and cut down, but there was a clear winner based on the people taking part in this research.

Pettigrew said that many people don't know that alcohol is a cancer causing substance. It is important that drinkers have access to it. We need to give people ways to reduce their risk of cancer by telling them about alcohol's link to the disease.

According to the World Health Organization, as many as 7 percent of premature deaths worldwide can be attributed to alcohol consumption, and making drinkers more aware of the health risks is one way to tackle that problem.

Health agencies have looked at ways of making booze less readily available and more expensive, but personal choices will determine whether or not behavior around alcohol will change in the long term.

It's not an approach that will work elsewhere, but it is possible to count your drinks if you want to cut down.

It's important to find out which messages work best in alcohol harm-reduction campaigns because there are limited resources.

It was published in a journal.

The first version of this article was published in June of 2020.