The strategies of alcohol industry SAPROs: Inaccurate information, misleading language and the use of confounders to downplay and misrepresent the risk of cancer

We start by summarising our core findings, to contextualise the rest of our response. These are that alcohol industry social aspects/public relations organisations (SAPRO) dispute in different ways the risk of cancer from alcohol consumption, particularly breast cancer, and to some extent colorectal cancer 1. When some risk is acknowledged, that risk is often presented in conjunction with a range of other potential confounders, thus undermining the evidence that there is an independent relationship. Smoking is sometimes used to imply that the risk is confined to smokers. Not all these strategies are used by all these (or other) SAPROs, all the time.