If the board wasn’t so slow tonight I would try to post a site where we discussed weather absinthe was illegal in the US.
You can find it by going to search and entering absinthe and justwannano.
Dammit, I just know Cecil did a column on absinthe and the Impressionists (it’s in the first book, I think), but I can’t find the cursed thing, and search turns up nothing. He did mention, re: Wormwood as the active agent in absinthe setting it apart from your garden variety booze, that the symptoms of absinthe abuse, such as hallucinations and the like, are similar to those of advanced alcoholism, so it’s hard to tell whether absinthe is necessarily any more evil than the aforementioned 151.
I’ve had the legal stuff, sans Wormwood, and it tastes like Scope.