Coca-Cola head office
Julie Hambleton
Julie Hambleton
April 28, 2022 Â·  4 min read

Elon Musk jokingly says he now wants to buy Coca-Cola and ‘put the cocaine back in’

Last week, eccentric Tesla Billionaire Elon Musk announced his plans to purchase Twitter. Well, he officially bought it for $44 billion, and he’s still using it to say some pretty ‘interesting’ things. His most recent tweet has sparked many reactions from people around the world. In it, he joked that his next big purchase would be to buy Coca-Cola and put the cocaine back in it.

Elon Musk Joked That He Will Buy Coca Cola And Put The Cocaine Back In

Coca-Cola is one of the most popular soft drinks consumed around the world. While no one is arguing its a healthy drink, it is, perhaps, a bit better than it originally was. For those who don’t know, Coca-Cola gets its name from two key ingredients that it used to contain. The second part of the name, cola, comes from the kola nut powder used to give the drink its caffeine kick. However, the first part comes from coca leaf extract. That’s right, the plant used to create the recreational party drug cocaine. (1) According to a 1999 Snopes investigation the original recipe of Coca-Cola contained some cocaine (technically it contained ecgonine, a precursor to cocaine), which was reduced to trace amounts of cocaine by 1902, and was subsequently eliminated from the drink by 1930 (2).

Originally the creator of Coca-Cola said that the beverage was a tonic that helped ease other addictions such as morphine or opium. Naturally, people found out about the cocaine and the public spoke out against it. Almost a decade after it was created, the chemist who created it removed the coca leaf extract. The extremely high caffeine content, however, remained until after World War One. Costs for the ingredient skyrocketed, leading them to reduce the amount used. It used to be that Coca-Cola had as much, if not more, caffeine than an espresso.

Putting The Cocaine Back In?

Elon Musk recently purchased Twitter in a bid to bring the platform back to what he considers its original purpose: Free speech. Always an active Twitter user, one of his first tweets since his big buy was about what else he could spend his money on to bring it back to its original state. He Tweeted out:

“Next I’m buying Coca Cola to put the cocaine back in” (3)

Clearly, this was a joke, and it appears as though most of his followers picked up on that. He followed up on it with a tweet that said “beats the hell out of red bull”. The responses to his tweet have been quite interesting.

Read: Elon Musk wants to turn Twitter HQ into a homeless shelter

Twitter Responds

One Twitter user responded by doctoring a tweet that features Musk saying “Now I am going to buy McDonalds and fix all of the ice cream machines.” Musk replied to this saying “listen, I can’t do miracles, okay?”.

There were several other jokes made, as well, that not everyone has found so humorous. For example, an SEC filing said that Musk has to avoid tweeting anything negative about Twitter until the deal is finalized. Being the brazen billionaire that he is, he tweeted out a meme on Wednesday mocking the company’s head of legal, policy, and trust Vijaya Gadde anyways.

Twitter Concerns

In the last year or so, Twitter has really cracked down on hate speech and misinformation. They banned political ads from the platform, as well as permanently banned former president Donald Trump. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they cracked down hard on any tweet releasing misinformation about the illness and otherwise. (4)

Musk has been rather outspoken about how he wants to bring Twitter back to be a better ground for what he considers free speech. He says that in order to achieve this, both the left and right sides of opinion and politics need to be “equally unhappy”. Many users fear, however, that this will just bolster those who want to use the platform to spew hate speech and discrimination. 

Musk’s tweeted meme slamming Gadde about the supposed left-wing bias of Twitter, thousands of people commented. Unfortunately, many of these comments were incredibly sexist and racist. Most of those were subsequently removed for violating Twitter’s rules.

Other Twitter Ideas

Besides making Twitter a “politically neutral” platform, Musk has a few other ideas. He tweeted out that he wants to make Twitter “maximum fun”. He said that DMs should have end-to-end encryption so that no one can spy on or hack your messages.

We will have to see how Musk’s take-over shakes out and what becomes of Twitter as a result.

Keep Reading: ‘WOKE MIND VIRUS’: Elon Musk says Netflix is ‘unwatchable’ as platform’s shares nosedive

Sources

  1. “‘I’m buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in’: Elon Musk jokes he’s planning on snapping up the Atlanta drinks giant to return to the original formula that had 3.5mg of the drug in it.” Daily Mail. David Averre. April 28, 2022.
  2. “Did Coca-Cola Ever Contain Cocaine?” Snopes. May 1999
  3. “Elon Musk Jokes About Buying Coca-Cola to ‘Put the Cocaine Back In’.” Time. Alex Millon. April 28, 2022.
  4. “Elon Musk is joking about buying Coke to ‘put the cocaine back in’ as investors worry whether his Twitter buy will go through.” Fortune. Sophie Millor. April 28, 2022.