Ontario Study Finds Drinkers Who Reject Alcohol-Cancer Link Report Drinking More Often

Drinkers in Ontario who were unaware of, or rejected, the link between alcohol and cancer reported drinking more often than those who accepted that link, according to a new study that adds to evidence about how risk awareness may shape alcohol use.

The research, published in Cancer Causes & Control, analyzed responses from 3,085 adults who said they had consumed alcohol in the previous 12 months. The respondents came from the 2024 and 2025 waves of the CAMH Monitor, a repeated web-based cross-sectional survey of adults age 18 and older. Women made up 50.8% of the sample.

Researchers said alcohol is an established causal risk factor for multiple cancers, but many consumers still do not fully recognize that risk. In the survey, 13.3% of current drinkers said they somewhat or strongly disagreed that alcohol raises cancer risk, while 19.7% said they did not know about the risk.

The study found that uncertainty or disbelief about alcohol-related cancer risk was associated with more frequent drinking. The paper was observational, which means it identified a statistical relationship but did not prove that lack of awareness caused people to drink more often.

To examine that relationship, the authors used multivariate multinomial and ordinal logistic regression models. They adjusted for a range of sociodemographic and behavioral factors. The goal was to measure how perceptions of cancer risk varied among drinkers and how those perceptions were linked to alcohol consumption frequency.

One of the clearest differences appeared among people who both drank alcohol and smoked cigarettes. Compared with drinkers who did not smoke, drinkers who smoked were nearly twice as likely to disagree with the alcohol-cancer link. The study reported a relative risk ratio of 1.98, with a 95% confidence interval of 1.32 to 2.98.

The pattern was different among cannabis users. Drinkers who used cannabis were less likely than non-users to disagree that alcohol raises cancer risk. The researchers reported a relative risk ratio of 0.54, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.38 to 0.76.

The authors said those differences suggest that public health messages are not reaching all groups in the same way. In particular, they pointed to uneven risk perception between drinkers who smoke cigarettes and drinkers who use cannabis. They argued that the findings support more targeted communication campaigns aimed not only at informing people that alcohol can cause cancer, but also at increasing acceptance of that message.

The study did not test any specific warning label, advertising rule or education campaign. It also did not measure business practices in the alcohol market. Still, the results are likely to feed a wider debate over how health risks are communicated across the beverage sector, including by producers, distributors, retailers, bars and restaurants. Any policy discussion in that area would need to account for the limits of the research, since the study shows an association rather than a cause-and-effect relationship.

The work also adds detail to a broader public health problem. Alcohol’s connection to cancer has been established in medical research for years, yet the survey suggests that a sizable share of drinkers either do not know about the risk or do not believe it. That gap matters because the study indicates that those views are tied to how often people drink.

The article was written by Y. T. Nigatu, K. Shield and H. A. Hamilton. It appeared in Cancer Causes & Control under the title Alcohol consumption frequency and cancer risk perception among drinkers.