Current science proposes that even 2 drinks a week significantly increases cancer rate, and is the current suggested limit for health - I suspect it would be lower but for reactions like you're having. It seems likely that double or triple that is indeed unsafe.
Media is very careful not to shame their readers: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alcohol-cancer-risk-what-to-kno...
https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/about-alcohol-use/moderate-alcoh...
Yes. I assert that drinking 3½–7 drinks a week sounds moderate. One or two drinks a week is light. Heavy drinking would be something like 24 or more.
I define the heaviness of drinking by intoxication, not cancer risk.
I think maybe you moved the goalposts here.
One might think that having admitted this Smith would be circumspect, apologetic and more careful with his claims about health in future. Of course he did the exact opposite:
> However, Mr Smith says this doesn't mean alcohol is not dangerous. He later told The Guardian that this would be a "serious misinterpretation" of his comments. He also argued that the figures were "in the right ball park", and called for heavier taxes to cut consumption
The numbers were based on no evidence but also amazingly in the right ballpark. No contradiction there if you work in public health. Sure enough, ten years later the guidance had become even more extreme [2], with men and women now becoming biologically identical and the government telling citizens that even one drop of alcohol was dangerous:
> The report recommend an upper limit of 14 units per week for both adult men and women, and then included the much-derided “no safe limits” observation.
This highly ideological guidance might have been because:
> Members of the expert group include prohibitionists and anti-alcohol campaigners
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2007/10/22/drinking_made_it_all_...
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/22/stats_gurus_open_fire...
> the astounding thing is that one of the guidelines is that you should drink every day at twice the NHS heavy drinking guidelines. That is a recipe for alcoholism.
Say what? The article implies that 1 glass of wine every day or two (i.e., half of 1–2 per day) is heavy. That seems frankly insane to me.