While we all should know by now that smoking increases the risk of mouth cancer, by nine times, dental researchers say now that alcohol containing mouthwashes can also cause harm.
They claim that drinking alcohol and the use of mouthwash containing more than 20% alcohol increases the risk of oral cancer almost as much as smoking. A closer look at review literature (comparison of studies in that field), gave me no supporting evidence. Abuse of alcohol combined with smoking can enhance cancer risk, but ethanol itself is not carcinogenic (cancer-causing). There is no evidence that mouthwashes with alcohol increases cancer risk. Alcoholic beverages and smoking both increases cancer risk, both cancer of the mouth and other cancer types.