Ann -
        I think the 24% (actually, what I've seen is 23%) cited in
David's article is from a Bloomberg News report concerning the revenue
of a state in India.  I think it's a somewhat misleadingly high figure,
even for developing countries, because alcoholic beverage revenues are
one of the few sources of revenue for Indian states (as opposed to the
national level). 
        Alcohol revenues undoubtedly accounted for a much greater
proportion of state revenues in European-type societies in the 18th and
19th century than they do after the development of the income tax (and
efficient methods of collecting it), and the same kind of considerations
exist today in many developing countries.  However, the level of tax
collections are kept down by the competition from informal/illegal
markets.  The development of transportation may make this competition a
greater threat to state revenues in many places today than they were in
early modern Europe.
        As we have seen in Sweden these days, the legal industry and the
government, if they can agree on nothing else, can at least agree on
moral attacks on the informal/illegal sector of the market.
        I am forwarding a copy of this to David Jernigan in the hope
that he can provide the reference you want.  Robin


-----Original Message-----
From: Ann Tlusty [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, 15 October 2001 1:00 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: query


Dear colleagues,
  I have a request for information: in an anthology that I am just
finishing up (with Beat Kümin, called The World of the Tavern:  Inns and
Taverns in Early Modern Europe), we would like to note in the
introduction
the nearly universal problem with balancing moral attacks on drinking
with
the lure of government income.  As a modern comparison, we'd like to
include a statistic from an article I read on this listserv, namely
David
Jernigan, "Towards a Global Alcohol Policy," an article cited here as
appearing in a "recent" issue of the Globe. The article noted that
national
budgets of developing countries depend on alcohol sales for 2 to 24
percent
of their national budgets. Does anyone have the actual citation
information
for this article (date, issue no., page no.?)  I'm in Germany right now
and
don't have access to my library facilities, nor do I have the original
email that included the article.
thanks,
Ann T.