Drinking over 1 pint "raises cancer risk"

I find it a bit hard to believe that until I have seen some statistics.

Huh, I'd look up statistics or something to answer that.

I'll knock some up for you probably with more perspective than the article.

Fact one: The discovery of late Stone Age beer jugs has established the fact that purposely fermented beverages existed at least as early as c. 10,000 BC.

That gives alcohol an existence of ~12,000 years.

The cigarette came into widespread use around the mid 1800s (some time after 1852, due to the invention of the match) tobacco came into wide-spread use about 300 years before that. This gives tobacco a casual 3-400 years of any sort of prominence among the worlds population.

Which do you seriously think has killed more people? even though alcohol has been around you know, a massive 30+ times longer, it wasn't something people were dying from explicitly until the last several centuries. To put things in a current perspective here are some statistics (which i know you love) from the CDC circa 2006.

Cigarette smoking causes about 1 of every 5 deaths in the United States each year.1,6 Cigarette smoking is estimated to cause the following:1

443,000 deaths annually (including deaths from secondhand smoke)
49,400 deaths per year from secondhand smoke exposure
269,655 deaths annually among men
173,940 deaths annually among women

Cigarette use causes premature death:

On average, adults who smoke cigarettes die 14 years earlier than nonsmokers.7
Based on current cigarette smoking patterns, an estimated 25 million Americans who are alive today will die prematurely from smoking-related illnesses, including 5 million people younger than 18 years of age.

Too put some of that in perspective, the death American military ww2 death toll was 416,800. That is over around 4 years of military involvement.

Since you like statistics so much, here is one from 2002 on the just financial harms of cigarettes, courtesy the CDC. CDC estimates smoking health and productivity costs reach $150 billion a year, according to a new study published in this week's WMMR. CDC estimated the total cost of smoking at $3,391 a year for every smoker, and even itemized the per-pack health/productivity costs at $7.18/pack. Further, it estimated the smoking-related medical costs at $3.45 per pack, and job productivity lost because of premature death from smoking at $3.73 per pack.

Now it's time for some alcohol stats. I couldn't find them for 2006 but for 2007 this is what i got, also from the CDC.

Number of alcoholic liver disease deaths: 14,406
Number of alcohol-induced deaths, excluding accidents and homicides: 23,199

Now since you obviously know little about alcohol i'll just tell you those aren't from normal regulated alcohol consumption.

There you have statistics, the harms aren't even and you are still talking out your ass.