Every week, Louis G.* goes to the post office with his car filled with crates of Crush cream soda bottles. The Canada Post officer looks at him incredulously, trying to understand why the young man is sending all these drinks to the United States, at great expense. But what she does not know is that he gets close to $200 [$152 USD] for each of these cases. In Quebec, a case goes for about $15 [$11 USD].

In September 2018, Louis created the Instagram page Rare Drank. He published some photos of soft drinks exclusive to Quebec, such as the Sprite peach and Kiri Cola. Quickly, he received requests from users ready to pay a big price for Crush cream soda. "The first day, I already had orders for five crates, with only a hundred subscribers," he says.

Louis was inspired by the success of the American company Exotic Pop, a website on which you can find dozens of soft drinks from around the world. A simple bottle of Fanta can be as much as $50. The company also installs vending machines in the United States.

The craze for these luxury drinks is inflated by rappers like Lil Pump, Travis Scott, Migos, or Drake, who show them on social media and talk about them in their songs. This craze is also closely linked to the consumption of lean (also called purple drank or syzzurp): codeine syrup mixed with soft drinks. Since the 1990s, this opioid has been associated with the hip-hop community in the southern United States.

"The majority of my clients are either lean dealers, rappers, music labels or studios," says Louis. "Before, these people went to the convenience store to buy 35 Sprites so that everyone had something to drink. Now they order a box from me and sell it for $15 to $20 a bottle."

A bottle of 500 milliliters of lean can go for more than $1,200 on the black market. "The kind of consumer who wears chains at $30,000 doesn't care to pay [for] a $20 bottle to put 60 ml of syrup in it. It's more baller on social networks. For him, it's better than Dom Pérignon."