Elon Musk tweeted today that he would like to buy Coca-Cola to “put the cocaine back in” to the popular drink.
Mr Musk’s post came only days after the billionaire agreed to buy social media giant Twitter in a massive £35 billion deal.
Despite the tweet likely being a joke, it is based in some historical truth.
Coca-Cola was first invented in 1885 by John Pemberton, a pharmacist, who marketed the drink as a “brain tonic and intellectual beverage” and a “patent medicine”.
Like a number of other medicines at the time, it is believed that Coca-Cola contained a small amount of cocaine.
It was far from uncommon for medicines towards the end of the 19th century to contain ingredients like cocaine or opium, and they didn’t know the effects these drugs had.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, from this moment for over forty years the amount of cocaine in the drink was gradually decreased over time.
A 1988 New York Times article on Coca-Cola also reported how the now soft drink once contained hard drugs.
Cocaine was removed from the drink in 1929, leaving it the drink Brits more or less know today.
The tweet amassed a massive response with over two million likes and Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert took a swipe at President Joe Biden ’s son’s drug addiction in the replies to it.
The 35-year-old pro-gun activist wrote: "Has Hunter [Biden] been asking you for favors?".
Since Mr Musk’s surprise acquisition of the platform he has been tweeting out how he would improve the platform.
Most of it has centred around the issue of free speech on the platform and what he has said is censorship on it.
He tweeted: “The extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech says it all”.
The richest man in the world added: “For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally”.
To fund his multi-billion pound offer, Mr Musk secured £10.4billion in loans from investment banks including Morgan Stanley, and Barclays PLC, and a £10 billion loan secured by a portion of his stake in Tesla Inc.
After the announcement of his deal with Twitter, Mr Musk lost £25.5 billion as Tesla shares tumbled 12 per cent in direct response to the risk around snapping up the social media giant.
Elon Musk is currently the richest person alive with a fortune of £211.26 billion.
