Under this heading, the Atlantic (Dec. 04) offered a short article or
listing.

Drawing on data from the World Drinks Trade 2004 (a British
publication), the article listed the top ten consuming countries (from
1st to 10th):

Luxembourg
Hungary
Czech Republic
Ireland
Germany
France
Portugal
Spain
Great Britain
Denmark

Russia ranked 15th overall but 1st in spirits consumption.  Russia
consumed relatively little beer and wine.

The USA was 26th among the 45 countries that were ranked.  The USA
consumed relatively little wine and spirits.

The precise criteria were left unclear, but there are graphic
representations of the different forms of alcohol that each of the top
ten country consumed.

For me, the main surprise was that the Czech Republic wasn't listed
first in per capita consumption of alcoholic drinks.

I wonder what the rankings would be for consumption of various illegal
drugs.

Speaking of illegality, Sweden (I am told) consumes much of its alcohol
either from illegal sources or legal homebrew, so official Swedish
statistics are misleadingly low.

Of course, none of these statistics indicate whether the drink
consumption is concentrated in just part of the publication (as in the
Irish Republic, where many people are abstainers or nearly so) or
whether the drinking in spread across the day and the calendar or takes
the form of sprees (as among young adult males in Finland).

In other words, statistics conceal as much as they reveal.