Ozempic (Photo illustration by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The blockbuster drugs designed to control diabetes — now also widely used to help overweight people shed pounds — show great promise for tackling other prickly health problems: treating alcoholism, and perhaps smoking and other substance use disorders as well.

This is a potential game-changer. While overdose deaths from fentanyl and its sinister cousins have seized the spotlight for years — some 80,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2024 — alcohol-related diseases kill more than twice as many, at about 178,000 every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the drug that kills more Americans than any other is avai

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