Alcohol causes 20000 cancer deaths in the US annually

Alcohol use accounted for roughly 3.5 percent of all cancer deaths in the United States, a new study finds.
This amounts to nearly 20,000 Americans who lost their lives to cancer that year as a result of drinking.

Researchers also found that alcohol is a leading contributor to premature death from any cause, and they estimated that each alcohol-related cancer death resulted in 18 years of potential life lost. 
In other words, a woman who dies from alcohol-related breast cancer at age 60 likely would have lived until age 78 had cancer not cut her life short. 

"Alcohol is a known cancer-causing agent in humans, but it has been severely overlooked as a preventable cause of cancer deaths," said study co-author Timothy Naimi, a physician and alcohol researcher at Boston University Medical Center. "People need to know the impact of alcohol on cancer deaths because it's another reason why they should not drink excessively."