Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, there have been people all over the United States and Canada who have preyed on their fellow citizens by buying up surpluses of toilet paper, paper towels, and cleaning products with the intent to resell them at price-gouging levels. One couple alone in British Columbia spent tens of thousands of dollars on Clorox wipes and reportedly made a six-figure profit in less than a week by reselling them on Amazon.

This damage has been done and retailers like Costco and Target were unable to respond by limiting purchase quantities until it was too late. But these people have no idea what supply chain efforts were being made and how quickly we will bounce back as nations. They essentially gambled on being able to make a profit and they no doubt have every intention of returning all of that stuff in a few weeks after things start returning to normal.

They shouldn’t be allowed to.

Instead, they should be out whatever money they spent in their efforts to panic the citizens of America and Canada and profit off a global emergency.

I call upon the leadership of these companies to halt any attempted returns of these products so that the gambling these profiteers engaged in means they now just have a lifetime supply of the products they prevented all of us from having.