Absinthe legal again in Switzerland

04/02/05 Absinthe, the potent green drink favoured by poets and painters, is legal again in Switzerland, where it was concocted as an all-purpose medicine.

The Government has overturned a 97-year ban, imposed when an absinthe-crazed mountain farmer shot his family. Entrepreneurs are jostling already to open the first legal absinthe bar.

The drink opened the eyes of Pablo Picasso, Oscar Wilde and Ernest Hemingway and was known variously as the Green Fairy and the Philosopher’s Tipple. The French poet Charles Baudelaire dyed his hair green in its honour. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec painted some of his dancers while in a state of absinthe hallucination.

The conventional wisdom of the 20th century, that absinthe leads to madness, has been generally discarded and it is becoming fashionable again.

It was identified as a dangerous drug early in the last century, partly because some of the poets and writers using it killed themselves. The problem seemed to be the addition of wormwood, which was held responsible for side effects that included renal failure, convulsions and foaming at the mouth.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1467966,00.html