Alcohol

Coca-Cola will introduce the first alcoholic drink in the company's 125-year history, tapping into a growing trend in Japan for mildly intoxicating drink mixes.

But if you were thinking rum and Coke, you would be wrong.

Instead, the new brand will compete in a category known as Chu-Hi, a canned drink, the main ingredient of which is a vodka-like distillation of rice, barley and potatoes known as shōchū. Chu-Hi also typically includes sparkling water and flavoring.

Most Americans drink safely and in moderation. But a steady annual increase in trips made to emergency rooms as a result of drinking alcohol added up to 61 percent more visits in 2014 compared with 2006, according to a study published this month in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Visits to hospital emergency rooms for alcohol-related issues rose rapidly over a nine-year period, though it's unclear why.

In this new year, beer brewers are enjoying a temporary excise tax break that was signed into federal law as 2017 was winding down.

More Americans are drinking alcohol, and a growing number of them are drinking to a point that's dangerous or harmful, according to a new study published in JAMA Psychiatry this week.

The study, sponsored by a federal agency for alcohol research, examined how drinking patterns changed between 2002 and 2013, based on in-person surveys of tens of thousands of U.S. adults.