Drinking over 1 pint "raises cancer risk"

Cancer is not the only consequence of smoking. Bad breath, yellow teeth, loss of breathing capacity all come WAY before you even consider cancer (non-exhaustive list).
Intake of alcohol has pretty much no bad effects save for people who drink a lot and frequently.

How many of the alcohol consumers drink less than the amount mentioned in article? Not very many.

If people don't aim for being more or less drunk, why do they drink alcohol then? Why don't they just drink other drinks then? Heck, there's even nonalcoholic beer, wine etc. available nowadays.