Alcohol should come with a warning label indicating that it is a leading cause of preventable cancer, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said in a new report Friday.

"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 - greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the U.S. - yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk," Murthy said in a press release announcing the new 22-page report.

Nearly three quarters of all U.S. adults, 72%, reported that they consumed one or more alcoholic drinks per week, but fewer than half reported that they were aware of the documented relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer risk.

Seven different types of cancer, including breast cancer and colon cancer, have now been linked by medical studies to alcohol consumption.

Murthy said in an interview with the New York Times ahead of the report's release that people assume that drinking below the daily limits of one per day for women and two per day for men is safe.

"The data does not bear that out for cancer risk," Murthy told the outlet.

The most effective way to spread awareness of the carcinogenic properties of alcohol, Murthy suggested, is to update the health risk label on units of alcohol, similar to those for tobacco products. But this would require an act of Congress to achieve.

The advisory also calls for increasing general awareness of the risks of cancer through existing federal programs, including bolstering the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's "Rethinking Drinking" initiative.