Austria bans imports of Grimault hemp cigarettes

An Austrian imperial regulation dated 25 April 1882 prohibited imports of a particular Parisian medicinal product: Grimault & Co.’s hemp or “Indian” cigarettes. The original text identifies both the manufacturer and the names under which the products were traded.

The original prohibition

Regulation No. 46 appears on page 118 of the 1882 Reichsgesetzblatt, in its sixteenth issue. It was issued by the ministries responsible for the interior, finance and commerce. Its operative paragraph records agreement with the Royal Hungarian Government and completely prohibits importation of the named firm’s products.

The closing sentence declares that the prohibition takes effect immediately. The database dates the instrument itself; the publication day has not been independently established from the issue heading. This avoids turning a signature date into an unsupported claim about the exact day officials first applied it.

The original scan also resolves a discrepancy in a modern source. Jure Stojan’s study gives 25 April in its narrative but 28 April in its bibliography. The regulation’s heading clearly reads 25 April 1882.

The product boundary matters

The law’s wording is narrow. It prohibits imports of the products supplied by Grimault & Co. of Paris under the stated names. It does not enumerate all cannabis preparations, prohibit every medicinal cigarette, or create a general possession or cultivation offence.

Nor does its operative paragraph expressly establish a transit prohibition or a domestic retail-sales offence. Those claims would require another provision or instrument. The article therefore records the import restriction actually visible in the original text.

Medical supply after the restriction

Stojan’s archival study places the measure within the medicinal-cigarette trade. It describes a dispute over locally manufactured cannabis cigarettes from Ljubljana, then Laibach in the Austrian province of Carniola. A notice in the official regional newspaper in 1883 defended pharmacist Julius von Trnkóczy’s authorized products and treated the Grimault restriction as specific to the French firm’s wares.

That context supports a careful reading of the regulation’s named-product boundary. The newspaper notice and the regional concession have not been independently retrieved in this pass, so they remain attributed to the study. They do not supply a verified date for a new authorization: the study also finds advertisements for Trnkóczy’s cigarettes in 1881, before the import ban.

This event is attached to Austria as a historical imperial measure. Agreement with the Hungarian government is expressly recorded, but the entry does not reconstruct separate implementation throughout every territory of the dual monarchy. It carries no invented national score change.^[1][2]