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The office of the surgeon general issued a . That was depressing news for me as I do enjoy a cocktail or a glass of wine with dinner. Why couldn’t it have been kale or Brussels sprouts? That would have been no great loss.

The surgeon general now wants to label all alcohol products with a warning similar to those found on tobacco products. I wonder, since obesity is , are we also going to start seeing labels on cookies and soft drinks that they also cause cancer?

Having lived in California, thanks to , I am used to seeing cancer warning labels on hundreds of products. The hard part about all these warning labels is determining which products are really bad and which are still relatively safe to use. Frankly, the labels were so prevalent that I just tended to ignore them.

In terms of the real risk of having a couple of beers, I dug a little deeper into . It turns out that most of risk (83%) is for heavy drinkers. Those who have one or two glasses of wine per day face only 13% of the risk which is attributable to roughly 3,400 deaths per year.

While this still seems like a lot of deaths, you have to factor in that . With an , this equates to a death rate of 1 in 101,176 people. That seems a little less risky than one might have assumed but how does it compare with other risks?

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For example, on average, . The in a bicycle accident are 1 in 3,162, roughly 32 times the risk of a moderate drinker dying of cancer. Motorcycling is even more dangerous with a death rate of 1 in 722. Your odds of dying by being struck by lightning are 1 in 186,798. The good news for us skiers is that the are only 1 in 1.4 million — phew.

What does this tell me? I guess I can keep drinking but should consider selling my bicycle. I am curious though. When will we start seeing warning labels on bicycles?

Risks surround almost everything we do, and it is up to each of us to decide if the “reward” we get from the activity is worth the risk. In my younger days, I rode a motorcycle, rock climbed, did a good amount of backcountry skiing. All were relatively risky things but also, for me, highly enjoyable.

The risk of simply attaching “warning labels” to everything is that we will become insensitive to all warnings. One of the wildest warnings we now see is the “Warning — Contents Hot” label now seen on coffee cups. This was a direct result of a lawsuit by a person who ordered a hot coffee and burnt himself. Really? What’s next? Warning labels on knives that they are sharp?  

I am reminded of what happened with medications. When faced with lawsuits saying the drug companies were not being transparent regarding side effects, the companies simply went “all in” and listed every potential side effect, no matter how likely or rare. Labeling thousands of products with “this may cause cancer” is more likely to create indifference than enlightened awareness, which is the opposite of the desired effect. A better approach than simply inundating everything with warning labels, I believe, is to try to quantify the risk for people.

For me, I am going to continue to enjoy my martinis and wine. I will also continue to ride my bike.

Mark Lewis, a Colorado native, had a long career in technology, including serving as the CEO of several tech companies. He’s now retired and writes thriller novels. Mark and his wife, Lisa, and their two Australian Shepherds — Kismet and Cowboy, reside in Edwards.