Alaska to Post Cancer Risks Warning on Booze

WHY NOT EVERYWHERE? –

April 5, 2024 – House Bill 298, would require businesses that sell alcoholic beverages post signs warning of the cancer link. The cancer message would augment the currently required message warning that consumption of alcohol during pregnancy can cause birth defects. The bill has no sponsors from the Republican-dominated House majority, and there is no Senate version. The prime sponsor, Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage, said he had minimal expectations about its fate when he introduced it in January. “When we filed it, we expected to not get a hearing at all,” he said. To at least raise awareness about the alcohol-cancer link, he said, he issued a press release.

Then, as he describes it, something surprising happened: The bill started to move. “Lo and behold, we got a hearing,” Gray said. It got another hearing and advanced from the House Health and Social Services Committee to the House Labor and Commerce Committee.

Gray and his aide David Song discussed the public-awareness gap during a hearing on Monday in the second committee.