Asked yesterday about a proposal under consideration by the Health Department to raise taxes on alcohol, Mayor Bloomberg told reporters, "Never say never." But he added, "We do not plan to have that in our budget that we're working on right now." The Health Department gave booze hounds the shakes earlier this week when an official starting talking about "ways to reduce preventable illness and death," such as making alcohol more expensive. But as the Daily News reports today, high booze taxes may have helped make Alaska healthier. The state has the highest beer and wine taxes in the nation, and "saw a 29% drop in alcohol-related deaths when excise taxes were first raised there in 1983." And a second tax hike in 2002 may have contributed to a 11% drop in those deaths. Wow, maybe the government should just bring back Prohibition and eliminate death by 100 percent!