- Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday that he wants to buy Coca-Cola.
- His reason? In a tweet, the billionaire said he wanted to “put the cocaine back in the soft drink.”
- Many Twitter users have posted suggestions for other companies Musk should buy.
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Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday that he wants to buy Coca-Cola to “put the cocaine back” in the drink.
Musk’s post came two days after the billionaire took over Twitter in a $44 billion deal. “Let’s make Twitter fun to the max!” he tweeted less than an hour after outlining his plans for the beverage company.
While Musk’s comments about Coca-Cola were likely tongue-in-cheek, they contain some historical truths.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, cocaine was legal in 1885 when John Pemberton, an Atlanta pharmacist, first brewed the drink.
Pemberton’s prescription at the time contained a cocaine extract made from coca leaves. He described the drink as a “patent medicine” and “a brain tonic and intellectual drink”.
A 1988 New York Times article on The Coca-Cola Company also reported how cocaine was originally included in the drink but eliminated it around 1900.
Officials from The Coca-Cola Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
Musk’s tweet about Coca-Cola, which went viral, prompted a response from Rep. Lauren Boebert, who criticized Hunter Biden’s documented drug use. “Did Hunter ask you for a favor?” she wrote.
Since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was announced, many users of the platform have tweeted suggestions about which companies he should buy next.
A Twitter user wrote that Musk should “buy Fox” to get another season of the TV series Firefly, which Musk greenlit answered: “Something sci-fi that actually contains sci-fi would be great.”
Another Twitter user wrote: “@elonmusk should buy the History Channel and make history out of it”, to which Musk replied with a laughing emoji.
Twitter has seen huge swings in its user base since the buyout, with left-leaning accounts losing thousands of followers and right-wing users gaining them in droves.