Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday that he would like to purchase Coca-Cola to “put the cocaine back in” the drink.
Musk’s post came two days after the billionaire acquired Twitter in a $44 billion deal. “Let’s make Twitter maximum fun!” he tweeted less than an hour after voicing his plans for the beverage company.
While Musk’s comments about Coca-Cola were likely tongue-in-cheek, they bear 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 obtained from coca leaves. He described the drink as a “patent medicine” and “brain tonic and intellectual beverage.”
A 1988 New York Times article on The Coca-Cola Company also reported how cocaine was initially included in the drink but eliminated it by the 1900s.
Representatives for 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 took a jab at Hunter Biden’s documented drug use. “Has Hunter been asking you for favors?” she wrote.
Since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was announced, many of the platform’s users have tweeted suggestions at him on what companies he should buy next.
One Twitter user wrote that Musk should “buy Fox” to get another season of the “Firefly” TV series greenlit, to which Musk responded: “Some sci-fi that actually features sci-fi would be great.”
Another Twitter user wrote: “@elonmusk should buy the History Channel and make it about history,” to which Musk replied with a laugh-crying emoji.
Twitter has seen huge swings in its user numbers since the buyout, with politically left-leaning accounts losing thousands of followers and right-wing users gaining them in droves.