Coffee is said to be the world's most popular drug. As with anything popular, the authorities soon became aware of the financial possibilities, and either banned the product, thereby encouraging smuggling, or taxed it, thereby stimulating a black market. The Swedish kings have tried both options, taxation and restrictions, during the past few centuries.
King Gustav III decided that coffee was poisonous; to prove his point, he condemned a murderer to drink coffee every day. As a control, he pardoned another murderer and ordered him to drink tea daily. The outcome of this trial should have been a hard endpoint, by determining who died first, and two doctors were appointed to make this judgment.
In this case the two doctors died first, the king was then murdered, and the two murderers both enjoyed a long life until the tea drinker died at the age of 83 years.
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