Coca-Cola originally a drug?

Coca Tree

In 1885, Doctor John Pemberton was the local town pharmacist and drug-store owner.  He was struggling with his addiction to morphine after being injured in the civil war and treated for pain.  He invented a new elixir intended to cure his addition, later it was literally reported to cure almost everything and soon swept the nation.  And you guessed it.  It was an alkaloid based drink consisting of coca (the base plant of cocaine) and cola an African nut high in caffeine. One problem was that the medicine tasted horrible.  Imagine drinking dried up aspirin and water! The good news is that Doc Pemberton also had a soda fountain in his drug store.  That was typical in the day.  So he concocted a handful of syrups and secret ingredients otherwise used to make old-fashioned sodas until he found a combination that hid the repulsive flavor of the drugs. The strong combination of cocaine and caffeine did indeed cure just about everything.  Sadly its destructive and addictive if used regularly. The country soon got addicted and before it would be made illegal the company preemptively removed most of the harmful drugs from the sweet soda beverage.However, believe it or not, today,

The Coca-Cola company uses over 100 metric tons of Peruvian coca leaves per year to make your beloved beverage.

They supposedly extract most of the cocaine off before they mix the leaves into it our soft drink, They then sell the remaining cocaine to Mallinckrodt, a large drug manufacturer of pain killers based on cocaine–Hydracodone, Oxycodone…