Do higher taxes on alcohol reduce a wide range of social ills? ACSH staffers were skeptical of a study last month purporting to show just that, reasoning that drinking is fine in moderation and alcohol abusers would buy it at nearly any price.

As drugs continue to be taken for longer periods of time, unexpected complications may arise that were absent from short-term clinical trials.

Your iPhones and BlackBerrys may need some sort of viral “pesticide” because they may be harboring “more germs than a toilet in a subway bathroom,” a new study published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology finds.

Following New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to ban smoking from parks, public beaches and pedestrian plazas like the one found in Times Square, Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. is suggesting a middle of the road approach by creating designated smoking sections in outdoor areas where smoking will be banned. Vallone concedes that indoor smoking sections are futile, but “outdoors I think they are workable,” he said Thursday.

The headline of an article in Aquatics International reads “Highly publicized studies link cancer, DBP’s,” which kindly stated, is much ado about nothing. Based upon three studies, researchers found that disinfection by-products (DBPs) — certain byproducts of chlorine sanitizers used in swimming pools — may correlate with respiratory problems and bladder cancer.

Despite Canada s decision last week to restrict the use of bisphenol-A (BPA) due to its supposed adverse health effects, Australia is sticking to its guns by declaring that the country will continue to enforce the European Union s safe level (600 parts per billion) of BPA exposure.

In her role in the 1997 movie The Beautician and the Beast, actress Fran Drescher plays a New York cosmetologist who is mistakenly thought to be a science teacher. It seems that life imitates art, as Ms. Drescher is embarking on a “scientific” crusade by lending her name to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, an activist organization dedicated to scaring the public about the so-called carcinogens they’ll find in cosmetic products.

ACSH s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan comes to the defense of actress Katherine Heigl s decision to use e-cigarettes as a safer, more effective method of kicking her smoking habit for good. In her op-ed published Saturday in The Daily Caller, Dr. Whelan underscores the stagnant rate of smoking among adults over the last five years and emphasizes how e-cigarettes provide a safer alternative to the harmful combustion products of real cigarettes:

Two new drugs are showing promise for treating addiction to opiates — drugs like heroin, morphine, and oxycontin. This week, the FDA approved drugmaker Alkermes Inc.’s Vivitrol for treating heroin addiction. The monthly injection works by blocking the opiate receptors in the brain that cause cravings.

The Lancet reports that early drug trial results show great promise for a new antiviral drug combination developed for patients infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV).