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The Food and Drug Administration has called the abuse of prescription painkillers a "major public health challenge." On Friday, the FDA wrapped up a hearing on the drugs including oxycodone, Vicodin and Percocet.

These painkillers do their job well -- but come with a big risk. William Cope Moyers, a vice-president of the Hazelden Foundation, a drug treatment facility, said: "We are the most overly-prescribed nation in the world."

Last crawl for alcohol!

Late-night revelers who like to hop from bar to bar to bar might soon be out of luck if an Upper East Side lawmaker gets his way.

Democratic Assemblyman Micah Kellner has introduced a bill that would pull the plug on pub crawls by yanking the liquor licenses of bars that promote the boozy block-by-block odysseys.

Article Feature: Pix 11 News

Released in December, the $35 Vaportini acts in a manner similar to a traditional vaporizer, heating and releasing intoxicating vapors which are breathed through a straw after being heated by a candle to 140 Fahreneheit.

Bypassing the digestive system, the Vaportini causes alcohol to be ingested directly to the bloodstream through the lungs, potentially causing dangerous levels of intoxication - especially if abused.

What do you think about the use of alcohol vaporizer?

Energy drinks can be dangerous for teenagers, according to a new report published in a pediatrics journal. The drinks are particularly dangerous when they are combined with alcohol, reports CBS News.

The drinks can cause rapid heartbeat, insomnia, high blood pressure, anxiety and obesity, researchers write in Pediatrics in Review

Teenagers’ decision to have a first alcoholic drink may be influenced by their best friends, a new study suggests. Researchers found having friends who drink and who have access to alcohol is the most important factor in predicting when a teen starts drinking.

The influence of best friends was stronger than a teen’s own history of troubled behavior or family history of alcoholism, the study found.

When you toast your other half this Valentine's Day, here's hoping you don't finish off the bottle on your own. For a new study has found that couples who drink similar amounts are more compatible.

A study of nearly 20,000 married couples revealed that husbands and wives who both consumed a moderate intake of alcohol were far less likely to divorce than couples where one was a heavy drinker.

To help reduce abuse and overdoses of prescription pain medications, New York City public hospitals will begin following new voluntary guidelines on prescribing. Recommended by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Task Force on Prescription Painkiller Abuse, the guidelines limit prescriptions for opioid painkillers written by emergency department providers to a three-day supply for the treatment of acute pain. In addition, the guidelines advise providers to avoid prescribing prescription painkillers for chronic non-cancer pain unless other treatments have been demonstrated to be ineffective.

So you think it is safe to combine diet soda and alcohol to cut calories? Think again, the combination will lead to intoxication and possible risky behavior (i.e., drunk driving). The recent findings conducted by Dr. Cecile Marczinski of Northern Kentucky University and Dr. Dennis Thombs, University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth reveal how sugar slows down the absorption of alcohol from the stomach to the bloodstream.

Young teens seem to be more vulnerable with persuasive messages in television alcohol advertisements. According to HealthDay, the ads influence some young teens to drink more and experience drinking-related problems later in adolescence. The study found beer and liquor ads can promote drinking as early as seventh grade. The more exposure to ads the teens had, and the more they enjoyed watching them, the more alcohol they drank by 10th grade. Early drinking is associated with alcohol-related problems such as fighting or academic decline by 10th grade, the researchers note.

Smoke like a man, die like a man.

U.S. women who smoke today have a much greater risk of dying from lung cancer than they did decades ago, partly because they are starting younger and smoking more — that is, they are lighting up like men, new research shows.

Women also have caught up with men in their risk of dying from smoking-related illnesses. Lung cancer risk leveled off in the 1980s for men but is still rising for women.