Coffee was introduced to Sweden in 1674. It quickly became like a 17th Century version of marihuana, where many folks enthusiastically endorsed its consumption while those in authority eventually banned it as an illegal and dangerous addictive drug. In addition to the usual types of penalties associated with breaking the law, unlawful coffee drinkers had to forfeit their cups and saucers used to facilitate the crime.
One of the java naysayers was King Gustav III, who initiated a scientific experiment to prove the dangers of the beverage. Gustav located twin brothers who were scheduled to be executed and authorized commuting their sentences to life imprisonment when one agreed to consume three pots of coffee a day while the other would drink an equivalent amount of tea instead. The prisoners were closely monitored by two physicians, and Gustav expected that eventually he would receive a report that the coffee drinker had succumbed to an early and premature death while the tea drinker remained perking on.
Unfortunately for Gustav, he discovered that one thing more deadly than drinking coffee was being the King of Sweden. He was assassinated in 1792 before witnessing the results of his experiment. The tea drinker later died of natural causes at the age of 83. The coffee drinker survived them all, but history does not record his exact date of death. Who knows, maybe he is still alive today wandering through various Swedish Starbuckses for eternity.
The Swedish authorities in the 1820s finally abandoned all attempts at banning coffee. Sweden today has one of the highest per capita consumption rates of coffee in the world.
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