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The alcohol industry makes fun ads for their fun products. But are they a scam? Find out on a real bummer of an episode of my regular series. Is it a scam? Yep. There was this neat idea in the 90s that drinking was actually healthy for you, and despite the fact that obviously not, it came from actual studies. But those studies had some hilarious problems. Like the one that showed drinking red wine was good for your heart didn't account for other healthy or unhealthy things you did the rest of the time. And obviously people who have a glass of red wine with dinner are gonna have other healthy habits compared to people who have a bottle of Mad Dog with breakfast. And the studies that showed that drinkers 
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were slightly healthier than non drinkers put anybody who had quit drinking because of health problems in the non drinker category. Which is like doing a study of the safety of fireworks and excluding anybody who has nine fingers. Meanwhile, drinking definitely causes cancer. It causes seven types, from tongue to taint. But it's especially good at causing breast cancer. Which makes it especially gross that the industry has spent the last 10 years aggressively marketing towards women, including giving away wine to women to celebrate gender Equality and even partnering with breast cancer foundations. You can literally buy breast cancer juice with pink ribbons on it. 
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But we didn't hear nearly as much about the real cancer Studies, as we did the fake heart studies. That's because the alcohol industry is very good at three things. Funding bad research, suppressing good research, and making sure governments don't tell anybody that their product is dangerous. And if that sounds a lot like cigarette companies, it's gonna shock you to find out they were frequently the same companies. So do whatever you do. A lot of things that are fun but bad for you. But remember, this is an industry that knows its product kills you and is working very hard to make sure you never find that out. But is it a scam? Yep.