I will try not to cross your eyes with a lot of FDA gobbledygook but you who are concerned about the future of tobacco will want to read the stuff that came out in the Federal Register November 2010.

Essentially, the FDA says it has altered the rules of the game, jiggered the language of the Family Smoking Protection Act, and you will either live by their rules or take a hike.

The big news here is that fines for FDA violations took a gargantuan increase. Some of the fines can reach more than $1 million. (Not for individuals, I suppose, unless you are a major manufacturer).

As ol’ Irv Dirksen used to say, a million here and a million there and pretty soon, you are talking real money.

I bring all this up to alert you that the FDA has big plans in the works for tobacco products. That is not news, of course. What is news is that they have re-set the fines, costs of their rules, and regulation language itself.

It’s like they didn’t thinnk the language was tough enough, so they pulled in a room full of lawyers and told them to put some real shark’s teeth into the regs. They did.

Indirectly, this is going to have an effect on you, the tobacco product user. As costs go up, of course, your costs will increase. It is the law of the economic jungle. Keynesian, or something like that. It’s where you have too many fingers in the pie, to put it simply.

For example, if you are convicted of violating FDA tobacco product rules within a decade, the first two violation costs you $60,000 each, up from $55,000. A third violation in that same 10-year period will cost you a whopping $1.2 million, up from $1.1 million.

Now, let’s say that you are a manufacturer and you unknowingly violate a FDA oddball rule. You are hit with the $60K fine. Then let’s say you violate another oddball FDA rule that you were not aware you were breaking. That is another $60K out of your register.

Now you are not only wary, you are jumpy, thinking a FDA controller is peeking around every corner, and they are. Then, let’s say the FDA jackboots arrive again and accuse you of a third violation within a decade of trying to make a living.

You get slammed dunked. And, get this, the FDA’s so-called scientific commission is on for life. It can’t be retired, put out to pasture, or fired. They rule, the FDA enforces those rules, and jiggers them around in the Federal Register from time to time.

In this latest measure, FDA has given guidelines for when and how you can comment on and protest these new tweaks of the regs.

But don’t miss the deadline, or fail to comply on time. FDA rules go into effect within a month of their last publication in the Register.

Back to our black and blue manufacturer, who is struggling to hang on. He or she now has to recoup its heinous costs from heavy-handed government rules and regulations by imposing higher fees on its tobacco products, which necessarily cuts into profits, and consumer popularity. In other words, higher costs will curtail business.

Soon the manufacturer is considering the worst scenario, closing shop.

We live in a time when government has run amuck, controlling too much of our daily lives (my opinion, which won’t even get you a cup of coffee). Too many taxes take a toll on families and play out in society in a variety of ways, most of them bad.

People are forced to make dreadful decisions about life and death, quality of life, quality of hearth and home when too many governmental regulations bear down upon daily lives.

When people react in ways that are out of the norm, society seems shocked.

The FDA is pushing back hard against a public that isn’t so sure it needs all these tobacco product regulations.

You be the judge. I know which side I am on. How about you?