Post #187610 by captnkirk on Mon, Sep 19, 2005 3:19 PM

First off there are a few misconseptions floating around that need to be cleared up. Thujone (a-thujone) is not a neurotoxin, it is not illegal or even very harmful. In fact a box of stove top stuffing contains more thujone than an entire bottle of pre-ban absinthe. If it was a harmful substance, sage and other herbs that contain it would be illegal too.

Products containing wormwood are illegal to make or bring into the USA because it is a prohibited food additive by the FDA. Several medicines are allowed to contain it by the FDA because it has not been proven harmful in them, so it was allowed.

The rumors that absinthe was harmful originated over one hundred years ago with lies and yellow journalism and has since been disproven by modern science.
Like most conspiracys it was the result of many forces coming up against it and all strengthening each others assults:

1. Anti-semitism (most of the producers were owned by Jews)
2. the French wine industry (after a phyloxera devestated production, French wine was back, but its market had been taken by absinthe)
3. Additives in some brands were harmful (like antimony trichloride and copper salts were added to cheaper brands to allow them to have the color and clouding ability of more expensive brands)
4. Alcoholism (all symtoms of absinthism are also symptoms of chronic alcohol abuse) absinthe was the cheapest alcohol on the market so it was also the most abused (like gin was in England at the same time). It got blamed for everything.
5. Worldwide prohibition movements Blue cross and other prohibitionists campained relentlessly againt absinthe. Unlike the United States which banned all forms of alcohol around this time, the French and Swiss tossed absinthe like a sandbag from the balloon which was crashing and probably saved all other forms of drink by doing so.
6. Around the time WWI started, people belived if you drank too much the damage you did could be passed forward genetically and in the near future the country would contain only weakened children who sat around in the gutter all day and vomiting just like their fathers. When recruiters reported a larger percentage of the population were not suitable for military service than previous wars, they blamed absinthe for that too.
7. The so called absinthe murder. A swiss drunk shot his wife and children to death with a high powered rifle so the press and everyone blamed absinthe. Only problem was this man was a violent drunk before he ever tasted absinthe. On the day of the murder only two of the sixteen or twenty drinks he consumed even had absinthe in them.

So in some countries it was banned, in others it never has been. Recently Switzerland proclaimed there was never any scientifically verifible reason to have banned it, and it is being legally produced in France again.

Enlightenment wins over ignorance, sometimes it just takes a hundred years or so.

[ Edited by: captnkirk 2005-10-30 16:49 ]