That is called getting while the getting is good. Take some leaf, throw it in a pickled herring barrel, triple press it, toss a piece of wood soaked in whatever beverage alcohol you didn’t hype last month in the tin, cut the tin size down to 1.5 ounces, call it a limited edition, price the heck out of it, and count on FOMO to sell it out.
Tobacco companies are a textbook case study of how to, and how not to, wring the last dollar out of a declining market. In some ways, as pipe smokers, we are lucky that we have as much choice as we do. But even before the FDA rules came along in around the summer of 2016, those choices were declining, and the trend would have continued. But along comes the FDA, and every day I get an email announcing some new cigar made by Pepe Don Frito Dorito Garcia and every week an announcement of a new mold culture pipe tobacco.
There are lots of good tobaccos out there that will still be in production after the FDApocolypse. Whether we will be able to buy it over the Internet is another question. The marketing money will move elsewhere. The industry as a whole will continue to shrivel.