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Last week, the Coca-Cola Company announced that it was slimming down. Reeling from a dramatic 25-percent decline in US consumption of sugary soft drinks over the past two decades, a trend in part stimulated by consumer concerns about the link between soft drinks and obesity, Coke decided it was time to trim the fat.

Two months ago the citizens of Berkeley, California, made a historic decision to impose a tax on sugary soft drinks sold in the city. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and their DC-based lobbying arm, the American Beverage Association, spent a lot of money—an estimated $2 million in Berkeley alone —to crush the measure. Their message was simple: “Taxes on food, beverages, and containers will be bad for the economy.”

From the very beginning, Coca-Cola had a drug problem. The brand’s founder, Atlanta pharmacist John Stith Pemberton, was addicted to morphine, a narcotic many suspected Pemberton began using after suffering a series of debilitating wounds while defending the city of Columbus, Georgia, during the Civil War.

Many Atlantans would argue that Coca-Cola built their city. Take a look around and Coke's imprimatur seems to be on everything in sight, from the Woodruff Arts Center to Emory University to the World of Coca-Cola. As a high school student at Woodward Academy in College Park, I passed the visage of Coca-Cola's boss, Robert Woodruff, every day I entered the upper school's gates. The cigar-wielding statue of Woodruff was a constant reminder of Coke's contributions to my education.

Last month, the Coca-Cola Company made a big promise: it was going to help America lose weight. At the Clinton Global Initiative, Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper all agreed to reduce the sugary calories they sell by 20 percent in ten years, arguing that industry could be part of the solution in curbing a growing obesity epidemic. That’s right, Coke, a company that is currently the single largest consumer of sugar on the planet said it was now in the business of slimming down.

In the 1960s, Coca-Cola had a cocaine problem. This might seem odd, since the company removed cocaine from its formula around 1903, bowing to Jim Crow fears that the drug was contributing to black crime in the South. But even though Coke went cocaine-free in the Progressive Era, it continued to purchase coca leaves from Peru, removing the cocaine from the leaves but keeping what was left over as a flavoring extract. By the end of the twentieth century it was the single largest purchaser of legally imported coca leaves in the United States.