Abstract
In the year 1908 the Swiss people voted out of legal production and distribution the very popular absinthe drink and created one of the few examples of a still successful “partial” alcohol prohibition. This article considers briefly the history of the absinthe ban and asks how such a well integrated drinking pattern “got lost” in a very short time. The changing designations of the substance, the substance users and the imputed social consequences of absinthe drinking are reconstructed. A definition of absinthe as poison, the labeling of the drinker as deviant and the attribution and amplification of a vast array of social problems to absinthe drinking constituted conditions for a successful prohibition.
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