Absinthe Drinking.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 19, 6 November 1912, Page 56

Absinthe Drinking.

France consumes more absinthe than all the rest of Europe together. Worse still, she is consuming more every year. The year 1911 saw an enormous and quite unprecedented leap of over 1,000000 gallons. A commisssion appointed to study its effects entirely confirmed the indictment of the National League against Alcoholism that “absinthe is the source of madness and crime; it causes epilepsy and consumption; it makes the husband a brute, the wife a martyr, and the child a degenerate.” All the same, there are difficulties in the way of the suppression of the trade in absinthe. The manufacturers are a powerful corporation, and the State receives from the sale of this drink £2,000,000 a year and the communes a little less than £1,000.000. In the words of M. Caiilaux, “a wave from the depths” is to be feared if all the absinthe drinkers of France—■ chiefly recruited from the lower classes—

are to be deprived of their favourite Itquor. For these reasons the Government has abandoned the idea of a connplete interdiction of the sale of absinth/ It has been discovered that the principal poison in absinthe is a vegetable substance, thyion, so the suggestion is that distillers should have the right to produce a liquid and label it absinthe, if need be, bo long as it be free of this p’ er . nicious ingredient. Further, no phrt containing thyion shall henceforward be used in French distilleries, and of these plants absinthe or wormwood is the chief. From now on, then, it looks as if we should have an absinthe which is not absinthe. Whether it will be any less .pernicious is at least doubtful. The absinthe manufacturers profess themselves entirely- satisfied witji this com promise, a fact in itself suspicious.