Nice quote (not verbatim) from Adam Tooze on his Ones and Tooze podcast on Foreign Policy (How scary is DOGE? 15-2-2025)
…rather than focusing on the stimulant effect of coffee which are real and tea I think the real thing to focus on is the displacement effect because up to the early modern period and beyond most Europeans most of the time were slightly or very drunk because the safe thing to drink was to alcohol.
The quote was not from the DOGE section, but the economics of coffee section which formed the second half of the show. Coffee bars, of course, became the genius loci.