Elon Musk says he wants to buy Coca-Cola to “put cocaine back”

• Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday that he wants to buy Coca-Cola.
• His reason? He wants to “put the cocaine back” in the soda, the billionaire wrote.
• Many Twitter users have posted suggestions for other companies that Musk should buy.

Elon Musk tweeted 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 bought Twitter in a $ 44 billion deal. “Let’s make Twitter maximum fun!” he tweeted less than an hour after announcing his plans for the beverage company.

While Musk’s comments about Coca-Cola were probably tongue in cheek, they do have some historical truth.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, cocaine was legal in 1885 when John Pemberton, a pharmacist from Atlanta, first brewed the drink.

At the time, Pemberton’s recipe included a cocaine extract taken from coca leaves. He described the drink as a “patent medicine” and “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 in the 20th century.

Representatives of The Coca-Cola Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

Musk’s tweet about Coca-Cola, which went viral, led to a response from Representative Lauren Boebert, who took a stab at Hunter Biden’s documented drug use. “Has Hunter asked you for services?” she wrote.

Since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was announced, many of the platform’s users have tweeted suggestions to him about which companies he should buy next.

A Twitter user wrote that Musk should “buy Fox” to get a new season of the TV series “Firefly” green, as Musk black: “Some sci-fi that actually contains sci-fi would be great.”

Another Twitter user wrote: “@elonmusk should buy History Channel and do it about history,” as Musk responded with a laugh-crying emoji.

Twitter has seen large fluctuations in the number of users since the acquisition, with politically left-wing accounts that have lost thousands of followers and right-wing users have gained them in droves.