Fewer than seven in every hundred alcoholic drinks sold in Britain carry any kind of health warning on the label, according to the biggest audit of UK alcohol packaging ever carried out. The study of more than 530 products, published by the Alcohol Health Alliance and Alcohol Focus Scotland in a report titled A Clear Way Forward, found that just 6.7 per cent of labels displayed a health warning of any sort, and only 1.3 per cent mentioned cancer risk at all.
The rest of the findings are just as stark. One in four products did not tell shoppers how many units of alcohol were in a serving. Full nutritional information appeared on only 13.4 per cent. One in five failed to meet the voluntary labelling standards set by the Portman Group, the drinks industry's own self regulatory body. Industry funded messaging such as the familiar "drink responsibly" line turned up on close to 90 per cent of packs, so a shopper is roughly ten times more likely to be told to drink responsibly than to be given a piece of actual health information. Where warnings did appear, researchers found pictograms as small as 2.5mm across, hidden on the back and dwarfed by branding. Not one product carried a health warning on the front.
The timing matters. The Government committed in Fit for the Future, the 10 Year Health Plan for England published in July 2025, to replace the voluntary approach with a mandatory requirement for drinks to display consistent nutritional information and health warnings. The Department of Health and Social Care says it is working towards a consultation later this year, so the audit lands while the detail is still up for grabs.
Not everyone reads the same numbers the same way. In the same week, the Portman Group published its own market review, finding that 99 per cent of products carry a pregnancy warning and 96 per cent state unit content per container. Chief executive Matt Lambert has argued wider health warnings may be disproportionate when overall consumption is falling and most people already drink within the Chief Medical Officers' low risk guidance. Miles Beale of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association says the industry supports the existing scheme and is keen to work with the Government.
Britain has leaned on voluntary labelling since the pledges made under the Public Health Responsibility Deal in 2011. Other countries went the other way. A study of 1,636 labels across 13 European countries, published this year in Drug and Alcohol Review, found nations with mandatory rules had far higher rates of on pack health warnings, with Lithuania at 99 per cent and France at 95 per cent. Ireland's own labelling law, passed in 2023, came into force this year.
Canned cocktails sit in the middle of all this, because the category is growing quickly. The Wine and Spirit Trade Association's Sip 2 report, using NIQ data for the year to 27 December 2025, put UK off trade ready to drink sales at £704 million, up 12 per cent by volume and 17 per cent by value, with 44 per cent of that growth coming from drinkers switching out of bottled spirits. A sealed can is also one of the few formats where the serve is fixed, so the number on the label is the number in the glass. Free pouring at home is a different matter.
David Baddeley, founder of Greater Manchester based Boozy, said the audit should be uncomfortable reading for the whole trade. "We print the units and the calories on a 200ml can because it costs us nothing to be straight with people," he said. "Pour the same cocktail freehand at home and most of us have no idea what we have made. That is the gap this report has found, and I would far rather the industry closed it on its own terms than waited to be told how."
The free Cocktail ABV Calculator covers more than 100 recipes and shows the units in each, and the Espresso Martini recipe sets out a classic build for comparison. The full report is published by the Alcohol Health Alliance and Alcohol Focus Scotland.
Whatever the consultation concludes, the advice underneath it does not change. The UK Chief Medical Officers recommend no more than 14 units a week, spread over three days or more, with several drink free days. For guidance on units, calories and cutting down, visit drinkaware.co.uk.
