Alcohol and health: WHO global report

Last updated: April 17, 2025

The World Health Organization has published the report titled “Global status report on alcohol and health and treatment of substance use disorders,” which outlines trends in alcohol consumption in Europe and the most recent estimates of alcohol-related disorders.

Alcohol and health: what WHO says about alcohol consumption

Every 12 seconds, a person dies worldwide from alcohol-related causes. In 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) was clear: the most recent reviews of the scientific literature show that there is no level of alcohol consumption that is without health effects. For this reason, WHO’s latest recommendations suggest not consuming alcoholic beverages at all. Perhaps not everyone knows that, following this announcement, alcohol was banned from all events organized by WHO itself.

It is true that these recommendations seem to conflict with national guidelines, which usually suggest consuming no more than 10 standard alcoholic drinks per week. The reason is that national recommendations are low-risk guidelines, whereas WHO’s recommendations are based on the premise that the ideal situation for health is not to consume alcohol at all, since alcohol consumption is always associated with a potential health risk, even in minimal quantities.

Myths about alcoholic beverages: the most widespread false beliefs

In fact, scientific evidence showing an association between the consumption of any amount of alcohol and health outcomes has been public for some time, despite the widely spread belief — also promoted by the media — that a glass of red wine with meals is good for the heart. This is not the case. The Italian National Institute of Health includes this statement among the false myths related to alcohol.

The Institute emphasizes that saying a glass of wine protects against cardiovascular disease is incorrect and that, as widely highlighted by the World Heart Federation and the European Society of Cardiology, the idea that a glass of red wine is good for the heart lacks scientific evidence and distracts attention from the harms associated with alcohol.

Risks of alcohol: why excessive consumption is harmful

Many compounds found in alcoholic beverages affect health, such as acetaldehyde (an alcohol metabolite), methanol, and ethyl carbamate. In addition, some heavy metals (including copper, iron, manganese, nickel, tin, and zinc) may be present both in commercial products and in informally (home) produced or illegal alcoholic beverages.

On June 25, 2024, the World Health Organization released the “Global status report on alcohol and health and treatment of substance use disorders.” In the report, a group of experts presented the latest available data provided by Member States on trends in alcohol consumption, estimates of alcohol-attributable diseases, and policy responses worldwide.

Alcohol consumption is associated with more than 200 health conditions, including infectious diseases, cancer, mental and behavioral disorders, neurological disorders, cardiovascular diseases, gastrointestinal diseases, and injuries to organs and tissues.

Clearly, the negative effects of alcohol depend on the amount consumed and the frequency of heavy drinking episodes. For people who consume small amounts of alcohol and do not engage in heavy episodic drinking (compared to lifetime abstainers), the risk of diabetes mellitus, ischemic heart disease, and ischemic stroke is lower than for those who drink alcohol daily or become intoxicated periodically.

Although meta-analyses on the topic have observed a protective effect only for women, this may be due to the fact that men are more likely to engage in heavy episodic drinking. This, for example, can lead to an increased risk of diabetes in men that is not observed in women. At the specific cause level, alcohol’s contribution to disease- and injury-specific health burdens was 100 percent for alcohol use disorders (AUD) and alcoholic cardiomyopathy.

Alcohol consumption worldwide: the latest data

WHO has estimated that approximately 2.6 million deaths are associated with alcohol consumption, accounting for about 4.7 percent of all deaths worldwide.

Of total alcohol-related deaths:

•  Approximately 22 percent are due to diseases of the digestive system
•  20 percent to accidents
•  17.8 percent to cardiovascular diseases or diabetes
•  15 percent to malignant cancers
•  10.8 percent to perinatal conditions related to alcohol use during pregnancy
•  7.7 percent to episodes of intentional violence

Considering deaths from all causes, alcohol contributed to approximately 2.8 percent of all deaths and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) due to communicable, maternal, perinatal, and nutritional conditions. It also contributed to:

•  About 4 percent of all deaths from noncommunicable diseases
•  6.4 percent of injury-related deaths
•  4.3 percent of cancer deaths
•  2.7 percent of deaths from cardiovascular problems
•  23 percent of deaths from digestive tract diseases

In particular, alcohol is involved in approximately 42 percent of deaths due to liver cirrhosis; it is also implicated in about 2 percent of deaths from ischemic heart disease.

Alcohol consumption in Italy: data and trends

Despite the data showing the harm caused by alcoholic beverages, people living in Italy have not reduced alcohol consumption over the past 20 years.

In 2022, in Italy, one in five men and just under one in ten women consumed alcohol in ways that pose a greater health risk. More than 3 million people — one in 20 — drank with the intention of getting drunk, engaging in so-called “binge drinking.”

12.7 percent of men and 6.1 percent of women over the age of 11 reported regularly exceeding recommended alcohol consumption levels, totaling approximately 5 million people, slightly fewer than in 2011.

About 28 percent of people living in Italy are abstainers, with variations ranging from 21 percent in South Tyrol to 35 percent in Calabria. This is essentially the same percentage as 20 years ago. The data come from the Alcohol Monitoring System (SISMA) of the Italian National Institute of Health.

The bad news emerging from the WHO report is that in Italy, as in many other countries, we will not achieve the 2025 target of reducing mortality from harmful per capita alcohol consumption. Current trends indicate that the global target of a 20 percent reduction in harmful alcohol consumption will not be achieved by 2030.

The situation could improve with strong political commitment to awareness-raising, promotion, and resource mobilization, ensuring full implementation of the Global Alcohol Action Plan 2022–2030, with particular focus on the highest-impact measures (included in WHO’s SAFER package).

Since 2010, there has been a global reduction in alcohol consumption and related harms. Nevertheless, the health and social burdens due to alcohol consumption remain unacceptably high. Moreover, young people are the most affected: in 2019, the highest percentage of alcohol-attributable deaths (13 percent) occurred among individuals aged 20 to 39.

Alcohol and cancer: AIRC’s position on prevention

Scientific research has shown a clear link between alcohol consumption and an increased risk of certain cancers. According to WHO, there is no safe level of alcohol without health effects. For this reason, reducing or avoiding alcohol consumption is a choice that can contribute to cancer prevention.