Since 1990, the number of Americans dying from alcohol-linked cancers has doubled — a quiet epidemic unfolding in the shadow of the nation's celebrated victory over smoking. The risk reaches beyond the liver into the breast, colon, and esophagus, and it is arriving earlier in life than history would have predicted, touching adults in their thirties and forties with a mortality burden once reserved for the old. As one preventable cause of cancer recedes, another has been steadily rising to take its place, and the public health reckoning is only beginning.
Alcohol-linked cancer deaths have doubled since 1990, expanding beyond liver disease
Alcohol-linked cancer deaths have doubled since 1990, with rising mortality affecting adults under 55.