Once upon a time, free cigarettes were handed out at Congressional Black Caucus events and Rep. Edolphus Towns was referred to as “Marlboro Man” as a nod to his campaign contributions from Big Tobacco. None of this goes on anymore, but the CBC still has a complicated relationship with the tobacco industry, which makes the recent flavored-cigarette ban a sticky problem. Many think that the bill, which bans all flavored cigarettes except for menthols, which are disproportionately smoked by blacks, has racial implications. It’s causing a rift in a CBC already divided over the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton drama.

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All that talk yesterday about menthol cigarettes, black smokers, and targeted ads inspired today’s Darkroom. The truth is — although my search was not exhaustive by any means — I didn’t come across any cigarette ads geared toward blacks that were for non-menthol cigarettes. Considering the stats — 75 percent of black smokers smoke menthols — the tobacco companies have definitely done their jobs.

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Okay, picture this: You’re in a struggling band, desperate for exposure, but you still want to keep to your hipster roots. You’re featured in Rolling Stone, which seems like it would be great. But let’s be real: Rolling Stone is for pre-teens who will eventually be cool and for people in their 40s who never were.

Plus, you were in an advertorial for cigarettes. And even though you smoke, it’s not, like, a good example for the kids. Plus your mom doesn’t even know, and she’s not sending you care packages with an extra $20 for your American Spirits.

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Considering that magazines are dying and cigarettes can kill, you’d think the two would be a perfect match. Turns out, with all the future smokers underage readers and restrictions, print is dead to Big Tobacco.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, maker of Camel and American Spirit, announced that it wouldn’t run any ads in consumer magazines in 2008. Philip Morris has not run a print ad in the past three years. Reynold’s decision is unofficially the result of a flap over a recent Camel insert in Rolling Stone’s November 15 issue.

So now that cigarettes won’t be advertised in magazines, maybe they’ll garner an indie appeal, making high school kids look extra cool smoking. After all, as Lydia Hearst reminded us, "this whole country was founded on [looking cool]."