The potent emerald-green blend of wormwood, green anise and fennel, known as “the Green Fairy,” was once celebrated by the French society, including artists from Baudelaire to Van Gogh. By the early 1900s, France consumed more absinthe than the rest of the world put together. Yet within decades, it was banned and deemed a “national poison.”

What happened? Our analysis (recently published in Organization Studies of historical archives, newspapers, medical publications, and propaganda materials spanning 1870 to 1915, reveals a systematic scapegoating process which unfolds throughout three escalating cycles.

How absinthe became France’s public enemy

The process began with genuine social concerns surrounding the beverage, against a backdrop of alarming alcoholism rates, military defeat against Prussia, and anxieties about national decline.

Scientists, though their research was inconclusive, coined “absinthism” as a distinct pathology, claiming absinthe caused unique symptoms, including epilepsy and madness.

Here is where the dynamics become fascinating. Faced with growing anti-alcohol sentiment, producers of similar beverages – aperitifs made from nearly identical ingredients, such as anis, pastis and anisette, strategically distanced themselves from absinthe.

Advertising posters from the 1880s explicitly contrasted “healthy” tonics with “deadly” absinthe, showing death lurking behind absinthe drinkers, while beautiful women accompanied those choosing competing products. Wine producers joined the attack for economic reasons. After a devastating vine disease – phylloxera – had destroyed French vineyards, they needed to reclaim market share. Framing their struggle as patriotic – wine as French heritage versus absinthe as foreign poison – they allied with temperance movements and politicians.

Finally, even absinthe producers turned on each........

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