Everyone knows that alcohol is dangerous. It can make you throw up, it can make you seduce someone four times your age. It can even make you sit through an entire Jennifer Lopez movie. Worst of all, when combined with a leisurely stroll at three in the morning, it might even get DPS to ask for your I.D.
It turns out that there are other, even more serious dangers to drinking. In conjunction with the Salvation Army, the Australian Medical Association has petitioned Aussie booze peddlers to slap warning labels on their wares informing consumers that excessive consumption of alcohol can cause ... cancer.
The AMA goes on to point out that a recent study highlights the fact that a shocking 61 percent of Aussies were not aware of alcohol's carcinogenic properties. God knows that yours truly certainly wasn't aware that boozing on the weekends could give me cancer of the liver, the larynx or the breast. I'd put down a fiver that says my friends didn't know either.
With such a perilous characteristic of alcohol so hidden from the public's eye, I decided to do some investigating. I borrowed a friend's bottle of Sizzurp, a professionally bottled version of a homemade Southern beverage known affectionately as Grape Drank. Homemade Grape Drank is typically composed of vodka, cough syrup and purple Jolly Ranchers. If there is any alcoholic beverage that's going to give you cancer, this is it.
A thorough perusal of the bottle turned up nothing except a phrase scrawled in the fine print that could have been a tidbit of advice about driving drunk. There wasn't anything resembling a warning about cancer - the manufacturers didn't even have the common courtesy to alert drinkers to the dangers of watching "Monster-In-Law" or "Maid in Manhattan."
The bottom line looks to be that booze gives you cancer, and the industry is all hush-hush about it. Head of the AMA Mukesh Haikerwal, however, was quick to point out that cancer isn't the be-all and end-all of the perils of drinking. He states that "the biggest problems from alcohol relate to social disruption, the forgetfulness, the memory loss, the risky behavior and the violence." By gum, he's right.
There are just oodles of stupid things being drunk can make you do that I've never read about on the back of a bottle. The liquor industry cares not a whit for the safety of my loyal readers, so for their awareness, I have bravely researched several other things alcohol can make you do.
First up is the story of Ahmed Rashed, a medical student from Los Angeles. After a boozy night at the local strip joint, Rashed wanted to reward his favorite exotic dancer with a little something special. Instead of leaving a nice, big monetary tip, in his drunken stupor he instead opted to give her a severed hand. Now he faces up to 10 years in jail, and the dancer could land five.
Our next cautionary tale comes from an unidentified man in Guerneville, Calif. After drunkenly stealing a few extra bottles of liquor from a local supermarket, our hero attempted to flee the police by stripping naked and trying to swim across a nearby river. Noticing officers on the opposite bank, the man swam towards a dam, where he got caught in a water vortex. A daringly executed, raft-borne arrest barely saved him from drowning.
The final red flag about the dangers of drinking I will share with you comes from one Cinzia Sannino of Cardiff, Wales. After imbibing more than her fair share of fermented comsumables, she went home with four equally drunk young men. The next morning she called the police, perhaps unaware of the fact that the aforementioned drunk young men had videotaped her happily giving them lap dances. Now Sannino is spending six months in the slammer for false allegations of rape.
Let's review. Thus far we've discovered improperly tipping a stripper, nearly drowning while naked, leveling false rape accusations and cancer are all possible consequences of drinking. I, for one, have yet to be warned by manufacturers about any these dangers.
The best way to protect consumers from alcohol would be for bottles to be so covered with warnings that you couldn't even see the liquid inside. Of course, manufacturers could just make bigger bottles.
Adam Cambier '09 can run even faster than Tommy Lee Jones in "Volcano."
