We all like to be clean. By doing so, we feel better, much more secure, and confident of ourselves. This is especially important when the power of the circumstances surrounding you are like a windstorm and have transformed your entire world. The inability to buy deodorant, toothpaste, and similar products makes our self-esteem tank down to unreasonable levels.

It´s hard to stand up and fight if we feel we are inferior to our enemies. It´s just the way it is and Communists use this to keep people under control. For those of us who are more or less civilized, at least. The dictatorial regimes know this. They´ve used that scarcity against the populations they need to enslave, for decades. Whether if this works or not, will depend on us.

There's been a soap shortage in Venezuela

I want to make a parenthesis to present a couple of proofs that evidence the engineered scarcity in Venezuela of the hygiene products. Check this link

https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2013/09/22/el-gobierno-de-venezuela-ocupa-una-fabrica-de-papel-higienico-para-combatir-su-escasez/

Please use your browser to translate, would you? Back then, a guy called Fleming said: "there was not lack of production".  Knowing the corrupted practices involved in laundry schemes with our currency and the exchange controls…I find very hard to believe anything coming from someone with such strong ties to those powerful positions.

And three years later, after the failed State took "control" of the production, just read this article, informing than the scarcity was worst than ever.

https://expansion.mx/economia/2016/06/01/la-escasez-de-productos-basicos-aumenta-en-venezuela

2016 was a though year. Zika virus became almost epidemic,  like Chikungunya disease. Basic goods like toothpaste, soap, shampoo, and TP, almost inexistent. Not for us, though. We had a decent amount and we resisted until 2017.

Beware of hastily made commercial products

This being said, I´d like to mention there is an important fact here, which must be carefully registered.

This is the logical result; scarcity made people look for affordable and available options. The result is, hundreds of improvised chemical facilities all over the country, mixing the different chemical compounds brought God knows how from other countries, to manufacture the different products people are used to using.

However, this article, as recent as 2018 describes how people have substituted the conventional odorized soaps of major brands that once (before big mouth Hugo seized the factories) were produced in the country. The negative side is, many of these products are being manufactured without the sanitary regulations our laws provide, and the health of the users can be compromised.

Industrial products for the masses will cease to be produced in the numbers they are being produced nowadays. They need electricity and a myriad of different raw materials, and specialized workforce in many instances. Once all that production chains are controlled by the State (and these guys couldn't care less if your kids have soap, shampoo, toothpaste or toilet paper, and if you are in some developed country, this can happen there and even worst), you're done. The black market will swallow every little bit of profit people are making. I´ve seen this happening. Unless you have your supplies stockpile, of course.