Public awareness of the link between drinking alcohol and elevated cancer risk remains unchanged since February 2025, with over half of Americans saying that regularly consuming alcohol increases your chances of later developing cancer, according to a new survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania.
APPC’s February 2026 survey was conducted about a month after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) unveiled its 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans on January 7, 2026, which call for limiting alcoholic beverages for better health but contain no mention of a link between alcohol consumption and cancer risk.
The 2020–2025 guidelines explicitly warned that “Alcohol has been found to increase risk for cancer, and for some types of cancer, the risk increases even at low levels of alcohol consumption (less than 1 drink in a day).”
Survey Results
In the survey, conducted between February 3 and 17, 2026, and involving 1,650 U.S. adults:
- Over half (53%) of surveyed individuals said that regularly consuming alcohol increases your chances of later developing cancer—statistically unchanged from 56% who said this in February 2025
- Sixteen percent said alcohol consumption has no effect on cancer risk, also statistically unchanged from February 2025
- Over a quarter (29%) said they are not sure how alcohol consumption affects cancer risk, statistically unchanged from 26% in February 2025.
For context, APPC’s earlier February 2025 survey was fielded about a month after former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, issued his January 3, 2025, advisory on alcohol and cancer risk. His advisory called for updated warning labels on alcoholic beverage containers to alert consumers to the increased risk for at least seven types of cancer, including breast, colon, and liver cancers. The advisory was followed by a meaningful shift in public awareness: in September 2024, several months earlier, only 40% of respondents reported knowing that regularly consuming alcohol increases cancer risk, compared with 56% in February 2025.
“When it removed the warning linking alcohol consumption to cancer from the guidelines, the USDA turned its back on a substantial body of research,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, PhD, Director of the APPC. “The Surgeon General’s finding that alcohol consumption raises cancer risk gained attention. A clear, strong statement in the dietary guidelines could have amplified that impact—and helped to save lives.”
ASAPH Survey
Wave 28 of the Annenberg Science and Public Health (ASAPH) panel survey was conducted in February 2026 among 1,650 U.S. adults. Data were collected by SSRS, an independent research company, via web and telephone using a nationally representative probability sample from SSRS’s Opinion Panel. The margin of error is ±3.5 percentage points. The panelists are quarantined from other survey panel membership to avoid response bias from other surveys. The ASAPH panel has been fielded continuously since April 2021 across 28 waves.
Download the topline and methodology report.
