Absinthe was banned as a madness drug that was mostly just strong alcohol
By 1915 the green fairy was outlawed across much of Europe and in the United States, blamed for crime, madness and epilepsy. Modern studies find its supposed psychoactive powers, beyond the alcohol itself, were exaggerated. The culprit named at the time, thujone, is present only in trace amounts.
Wormwood has a long medical past: the Ebers Papyrus mentions it around 1550 BC, and Lucretius described bitter wormwood medicine given to children from a cup with honey smeared on the rim. The distilled spirit, flavoured with green anise and fennel, appeared in the 18th century. Legend credits Pierre Ordinaire, a French doctor in Couvet, Switzerland, around 1792, though local sisters named Henriod may have been brewing the elixir first. In 1797 Major Dubied bought the formula and opened a distillery with his son-in-law Henry-Louis Pernod, and Pernod Fils became a leading brand.
French soldiers in Algeria were given it against malaria in the 1840s and came home fond of it. By the 1860s five in the afternoon was nicknamed the green hour, and mass production made it cheap enough that France drank 36 million litres a year by 1910. Artists and writers adored it, which is partly why moral campaigners loathed it; one modern writer argues the temperance movement and the wine trade orchestrated smears.
The turning point came in 1905, when a Swiss farmer, Jean Lanfray, killed his wife and two children after drinking heavily. His wine and brandy were largely ignored and two glasses of absinthe took the blame. A petition gathered more than 82,000 signatures, and Swiss voters wrote a ban into the constitution in a referendum on 5 July 1908. The United States followed in 1912 and France in 1914. French drinkers switched to pastis, while Swiss moonshiners made a clear version, la Bleue, that was easier to hide.
Britain never formally banned it, and in the 1990s an importer brought in a Czech brand that sparked a revival. New European Union food laws removed old barriers, and in 2000 La Fée became the first absinthe distilled and bottled in France since the ban. Nearly 200 brands were being made in about a dozen countries by the early 21st century.
Source: Absinthe
