Alcohol-related cancer deaths have doubled in recent years in the US

The number of annual alcohol deaths due to cancer has doubled in recent years in the U.S., researchers said this week.

The tally rose from 11,896 in 1990 to 23,207 by 2021, according to data that was presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2025 conference.

“Alcohol-associated cancer mortality has significantly increased in the U.S. over the past three decades, with a disproportionate burden observed in males and individuals aged 55 and older,” they wrote.

They reached these conclusions using data from the Global Burden of Disease database, which provides incidence and mortality estimates for 35 cancer types. They found that the rates increased for all cancers combined and specific cancers across both genders and age groups, with the exception of liver cancer in people aged 55 and up.

“In 2021, for [the 55-plus age group], liver cancer had the highest alcohol-associated proportional [mortality rate] in males (38.5 percent), followed by nasopharyngeal cancer (31.8 percent), while in females, nasopharyngeal (18.9 percent) and oro/hypopharyngeal cancers (18.4 percent) ranked highest. In 20-54 age, lip-oral cavity cancer had the highest alcohol-associated proportional [rates] for both genders,” they noted.

The researchers identified Washington, D.C., as the area with the highest rates of alcohol-associated cancer. Utah had the lowest.

An increasing number of women have become heavy drinkers, although alcohol abuse still kills more men than women. While drinking rates dropped from the 1970s through the 1990s, they also rose during the Covid pandemic. So did alcohol-related deaths.

“This is death as opposed to getting a disease. We can treat a lot of cancers, and we’re getting better at that, but this is really driving home the point that people are dying from cancer due to alcohol,” said Jane Figueiredo, a professor of medicine at the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, who was not involved with the research told NBC News.

The research, which has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, comes after former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a call for cancer risk warnings to be included on alcoholic beverages.

"Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States - greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the U.S. - yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk," he said in a news release earlier in the year.

The researchers cited this warning in their report, noting that alcohol consumption is known to be a significant risk factor for cancer.

The International Agency on Cancer Research, a branch of the World Health Organization, classified alcohol as a carcinogen in 1987, and the organization says there’s no safe amount of alcohol consumption.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had previously said that approximately 20,000 adults in the U.S. die from alcohol-associated cancers each year. The agency noted that most of the deaths may have been avoided if all adults had followed the recommended limits on alcohol use.

The authors of the recent research said their findings indicate the need for enhanced prevention.

“Our findings highlight the critical need for targeted prevention efforts, public health policies, and increased awareness to address the rising impact of alcohol consumption on cancer-related mortality across different demographic groups and regions,” they said.