Back in the early 1900s, it was a tough existence. You work a grueling 60 hour work week. There was no TV, and you were lucky to even have a radio. But what you did have was Coca-Cola. And that Coca-Cola had cocaine in it. That’s right, pharmacist John Pemberton invented Coca-Cola because he was looking for a cure to his addiction to morphine. Pemberton has suffered a nasty saber wound to the chest during a battle during the Civil War. The pharmacist was searching for an opium-free alternative to morphine and found that coca, the plant that cocaine is made from, worked wonders. He combined the extracts of coca and kola nuts to create Pemberton’s French Wine Coca, which would later become Coca-Cola. In 1881, the recipe for Coca-Cola was said to contain five ounces of coca leaf per gallon of syrup.
Conflicting reports say when Coca-Cola stopped making their soda awesome by using cocaine, but it was between 1903 and 1929. Well, it looks like Coca-Cola is maybe getting back to their roots.
A gigantic haul of cocaine was found at a Coca-Cola factory in France this week. The enormous supply of nose sugar is said to have a street value of $56 million.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop drinking soda.
The yayo came into the building with a shipment of orange juice concentrate from South America.
There was said to be a mindblowing 815 pounds of cocaine. Have a Coke and a smile.
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This is one of the largest cocaine busts in the history of France.
Beverage Digest reported that annual per capita consumption of carbonated soft drinks dropped to about 650 eight-ounce servings in 2015, which is the lowest since 1985. Maybe Coca-Cola is trying to jumpstart sales by adding a little Peruvian dancing dust to their pop to get people excited about soda.
Make soda great again.
[NYT]