Applying the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council's (NHMRC) 2009 guidelines for low-risk drinking, 48 participants were classified as being at high risk of short-term harm if they reported having >4 drinks on any occasion at least once a month, and as being at high risk of long-term harm if they consumed >2 drinks per day on average. Participants were recruited through an online panel that was accredited under the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO) standards for access panels in market, opinion and social research (AS ISO 26362). With a mean score of 3.77, the highest ranked ad was Spread, developed and funded by the Western Australian state government as part of their Alcohol and cancer mass media campaign. Around half of participants (46%) were classified as high risk for short-term alcohol-related harm and 31% were classified as high risk for long-term harm. Discussion 
 
 The first aim of the study was to rank a large pool of alcohol harm reduction ads according to the extent to which adult weekly drinkers felt motivated by them to reduce their own alcohol consumption.
– If you want to get people to stop boozing it up, don't show them images of glasses of healthy, sparkling water instead of beer—show them an ad that illustrates how too many cocktails can cause cancer to course through their bodies, the Guardian reports. That's the finding of a new study published in the BMJ Open journal that examined English-language alcohol ads to identify which ones proved best at inspiring drinkers to cut down. Researchers tapped a pool of 2,174 Australian adults ages 18 to 64 who drink alcohol at least one or two days a week. A total of 83 ads were shown, and the subjects were instructed to note after viewing each one how motivated they were to reduce their drinking on a scale from one to five, with "one" counting as an unmotivated "Nah, I'm good," and "five" as "Take the key to my liquor cabinet and bury it, please." The most effective ad: "Spread," a 30-second video created by the Western Australian government a few years ago that shows the cancerous mutations wrought after alcohol gets into one's bloodstream. The dud: that ad pushing water over beer. Cancer Council Victoria CEO Todd Harper tells the Guardian that "Spread" may have made an impact because folks simply don't know alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen, the most dangerous category. Even though Fergus Taylor, the director of Alcohol Beverages Australia, calls the "Spread" ad "scaremongering," Harper notes "every drink" ups one's chance of getting cancer, including that of the mouth, liver, and bowel. What these findings should do is spur campaigns that maximize the public's awareness of alcohol so they can cut their cancer risk, Harper says, per Mumbrella. (A study says alcohol can be directly tied to seven cancers.)