By John Tozzi, Bloomberg
Americans are drinking more than they used to, a troubling trend with potentially dire implications for the country's future health-care costs.
The number of adults who binge drink at least once a week could be as high as 30 million, greater than the population of every state save California, according to a published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry. A similar number reported alcohol abuse or dependency.
Between the genders, women showed the larger increase in alcohol abuse, according to the report.
"This should be a big wake-up call," says David Jernigan, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who wasn't involved with the research. "Alcohol is our number one drug problem, and it's not just a problem among kids." Read more >>