On the contrary, alcohol consumption is associated with lower rates of many types of cancers, as noted in my other reply, and light/social drinking has never been associated with a reduction in overall mortality (what people actually care about).
If you can get out of bed and have a social drink,you're probably pretty healthy to begin with.
My understanding is that more modern research has unambiguously debunked the "light drinking" assertions.
But this is not something I'd expect you to be convinced of, because I don't have hard evidence on hand. We will have to leave it there, and I will go refresh my understanding some other time, if you will too :)
Nutrition Facts dot Org just published a youtube video on this subject today. The studies that associated light drinking with benefits were found to have systematic errors in more recent analysis, and after correcting for those errors researchers found that there is a linear relationship between drinking alcohol and increased cancer risk. That is, there is no drop in risks with light drinking. Any amount increases risks of cancer.
I doubt very much that alcohol consumption in any quantity can cause a lower rate of any cancer and I have not heard of any study providing any kind of evidence for this.
When some studies show a lower cancer rate correlated with moderate consumption of certain alcoholic beverages, e.g. wine or beer, it is much more likely that those studies show a beneficial effect of some other substances contained in those beverages.
In that case, it is likely that drinking the non-fermented precursors of those beverages might have the same effects, even in the absence of alcohol, e.g. drinking fresh grape juice instead of wine, or even better, eating red or black grapes instead of drinking juice.
Alcohol in small enough quantities may have negligible bad effects, because humans and their relatives are adapted to tolerate the ingestion of fermented fruits, but there is no reason to expect any good effects.
Slippery slope is a fallacy, but I think it's worth being aware of in the case of addictive substances and behaviors. I cringe when a health-care professional advocates for "light drinking," when the chances of it getting its hooks in anyone far outweighs whatever nebulous, tenuous health advantages it might provide. Alcohol consumption is certainly associated with alcoholism, and alcoholics certainly have lower life expectancy than non-alcoholics.
> Alcohol consumption is certainly associated with alcoholism
Breathing is, too, but the important question is what proportion of light drinkers become alcoholics. According the the first legitimate looking hit, 56% of people have had a drink in the last month, 5.6% of people have an "alcohol use disorder."
So, ignoring details, 90% of light drinkers are fine.
