"Absinthe" a strong aromatic green coloured alcoholic beverage with addictive, psychotropic and hallucinogenic properties has been the most popular and intriguing intoxicant since 19th century. Owing to its apparent illusive perception it was named "la fe′e verte" a French word means "the green fairy". It was condemned for inducing insane and criminal act and was also stigmatised as madness in a bottle. Later, owing to detection of psychedelic ingredient ‘thujone’, the absinthe remained banned for 95 years; however, its fame ride over the suppleness in laws and in 2007, it was reintroduced with varying concentration of thujone laced with harmful flavouring additives. The avaricious manufactures have been lucratively selling absinthes without printing its chemical composition on the bottle labels by taking advantage of loopholes in govt. policies. The government agencies remain focused on lowering the concentration of thujone in “green fairy” than publishing the harmful effects of its flavouring additives. To unequivocally establish a technique for the detection of harmful flavouring additives in absinthe remained a scientific challenge for decades. Henceforth, we attempted to analyse samples of popular foreign liquor brand "Paranasse Absinth” by GC-MS technique. Our research outcome led to successful chemical profiling of absinthe by detection of multiple flavouring additives viz. maltose, sucrose, anethole and methyl ethyl ketone. Amongst the detected additives, anethole is toxic, irritant, estrogenic and cytotoxic; methyl ethyl ketone is irritant, allergic, causes dizziness, cancer hazard and reproductive hazard, effect respiratory tract and CNS. Moreover, these two additives can also act as chemical precursors of Narcotic Drug and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS). Hence, through this research an effort is made to secure public health and to alert the private/govt. agencies regarding these health/immunity hazardous alcoholic beverage with high alcohol content and flavouring additives especially in COVID-19 pandemic. Our research outcome will attribute a legal check in the uncontrolled trade of potentially unsafe herbal beverages such as absinthe.

Keywords: Absinthe; Flavouring additives; Anethole; Methyl ethyl ketone, Thujone; Green fairy liquor.