Thank you for your question regarding possible
restrictions on the thujone content of absinthe in Alberta.
As you can appreciate, we cannot offer anything like a
legal opinion on the legality of any form of absinthe. We
have, however, looked at several sources of information. We
have been unable to find anything that expressly restricts
the content of absinthe.
The Alberta statutes and regulations can searched here:
http://www.qp.alberta.ca/Laws_Online.cfm There are statutes under which absinthe could possibly
be regulated, notably the Gaming and Liquor Act and
regulations, but they do not seem to contain any such
provisions.
The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission has a website
here:
http://aglc.ca/ The Commission has a discretion as to whether to allow
any particular product to be sold, and it is possible that
it is their policy to refuse to allow the sale of certain
forms of absinthe, but if so this policy does not seem to
have been published. They would be an authoritative source
if you wish to contact them.
Federal statutes and regulations can be searched here:
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/index.html Once again, there are several Acts under which absinthe
might be regulated, such as the Controlled Drugs and
Substances Act, the Export and Import Permits Act, the
Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act, and the Spirit
Drink Trade Act, but again, we can find no provision
respecting absinthe in any of these Acts.
There is a section 4(1)(a) of the federal Food and Drug
Act which forbids the sale of any food that contains a
harmful or poisonous substance. "Food" is defined to include
drink, and "harmful" and "poisonous" are not defined and
must be intended to be matters of fact in the circumstances,
so it would be possible for a court to find thujone, above
certain limits, to be harmful or poisonous, and thus
effectively make this section into a ban on any such
absinthe. However, we can find no case which has actually
done this.
Judgments of the Alberta courts can be searched here:
http://www.albertacourts.ab.ca/Home/JudgmentsfromAllCourts/tabid/72/Default.aspx but we could turn up no cases concerning thujone or
wormwood, and nothing considering the marketing of absinthe.
CPL's E-library has a more comprehensive legal database,
but searching for "absinthe", "thujone" and "wormwood"
turned up no relevant cases.
We hope this has been helpful. Thank you for using Ask A
Question.
