You should be, at least if you're a beer or wine lover.
Last week, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a statement warning Americans that drinking alcoholic beverages can cause cancer.
"Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States," Dr. Murthy stated in his advisory, which advocated putting cancer warning labels on all alcoholic beverages.
This was just the latest in a recent barrage of warnings about Demon Alcohol.
"There is no safe level of alcohol consumption, doctor says, even one drink of red wine per day," read a headline on CNBC.
"Even a little alcohol can harm your health," said the New York Times.
That sounds pretty scary - and my fellow members of the mainstream media love to hype stories that scare people.
Perhaps that's why the media largely ignored that other report that was released last month.
That report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine addressed the key question at issue in the ongoing debate on alcohol.
That's the question of "all-cause mortality." If cancer is killing drinkers at a disproportionate rate, then there's reason for concern. But it's not, according to the study: In fact, they're living longer:
"The report concludes with moderate certainty that compared with never consuming alcohol, moderate alcohol consumption is associated with lower all-cause mortality," according to a statement from the National Academies.
A possible reason is that alcohol can have positive effects on the cardiovascular system. That's because it increase levels of HDL in the blood. HDL is the "good cholesterol," the one that clears the bad cholesterol LDL out of the arteries.
There are only two simple ways to raise HDL, alcohol and exercise. My formula for a long life is to go for a run at the end of the day. Then I drink a few microbrewed beers.
Don't I fear cancer? Not particularly. We're all going to die of something, but heart disease is the biggest killer of Americans, according to the CDC.
If knocking back a microbrew or sipping a glass of wine improves your odds of avoiding a heart attack, then why should you pass it up?
Certainly not because the Surgeon General tells you to.
That's the view of Jeffrey Singer, a medical doctor who consults for the Cato Institute.
The surgeon general is neither a surgeon nor a general, said Singer, who is a real surgeon. The Surgeon General is just a doctor whose role has expanded greatly over time.
The post began in 1798 with the duty of treating the sailors in the Merchant Marine. It continued to have a low profile, but then along came C. Everett Koop, who was Ronald Reagan's surgeon general.
First he took on tobacco, which undoubtedly is a threat to health.
But before long people were looking to the Surgeon General to tell them how to live their lives.
In this case, Murthy is arguing there's a consensus among medical authorities on the cancer threat from alcoholic beverages.
There's no such consensus, said Singer. The alarmists like Murthy are cherry-picking studies on the risks of moderate drinking to support his argument that we should put cancer warning labels on all alcoholic beverages.
"One says it's beneficial; one says it's not," said Singer. "If he wants to be honest, he should say it's all over the map."
Alcohol in beverages is perfectly natural, Singer said: "People have been drinking it since the first man drank it way back in prehistory."
If it had poisoned that guy, then it never could have become a staple of the human diet.
In fact, alcohol is one of just four sources of energy for the body. The other three are carbohydrates, protein and fat. All can contribute to obesity if consumed in excess. And obesity can contribute to cancer.
So why not put warning labels on all foods?
People could ignore them just like they ignored the advice concerning other threats on bottle and cans. These warn, among other things, that "consumption of alcoholic beverages impairs your ability to drive a car."
If you need to read the tiny type on a beer can to figure that out, then perhaps you shouldn't have been issued a driver's license in the first place.
This latest scare is classic media alarmism, said Singer. For some reason, my fellow journalists love to buy into bad news.
"If it bleeds, it leads," said Singer. "Isn't that what they say?"