The archive / Stimulants and intoxicants
1905–1915 · France and Switzerland
The green fairy drives people to madness and murder!
Absinthe
Panic meter
The verdict
Absinthe was banned as a uniquely dangerous poison. Later analyses showed it was no more dangerous than other strong spirits.
Reality meter
What was said?
Absinthe was the fashionable drink of nineteenth-century France. Doctors claimed that thujone, a substance found in wormwood, caused a disease all of its own, absinthism, complete with hallucinations and violent outbursts.
When a Swiss farmer murdered his family in 1905 after drinking – among a great deal else – two glasses of absinthe, that was the starting gun. Switzerland banned the drink in 1910, the USA in 1912 and France in 1915.
The verdict: what happened next?
Modern analyses of bottles from before the ban have shown that the thujone content was far too low to produce the alleged effects. The real problem was the high alcohol content, as with any other strong spirit – and the winegrowers' lobby had its own interest in seeing off the competition.
The EU permitted absinthe again in 1988, with limits on thujone. Switzerland lifted its ban in 2005.
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