On Monday, President Barack Obama signed into law the nation’s strongest ever anti-smoking law. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act will ban flavored forms of tobacco — with the exception of menthol-flavored cigarettes.

Now, some observers are asking whether the Congressional Black Caucus’s close ties to the cigarette industry may have played a role in the menthol exemption.

Menthol-flavored cigarettes are by far the most popular form of flavored tobacco in the United States. Menthol cigarettes account for some 30 percent of the U.S. cigarette market and are preferred by almost 75 percent of black smokers.

The exemption comes as a relief to tobacco companies, who take in almost $20 billion annually from the sale of menthol flavored cigarettes.

Philip Morris USA, a subsidiary of The Altria Group, has taken particular advantage of the new federal exemption. The company introduced Marlboro Blend No. 54, a new menthol-flavored cigarette, last week.

Why did Congress make an exemption for menthol-flavored cigarettes? It’s not because they’re healthier than other cigarettes. When inhaled, the key ingredient in menthol cigarettes, menthol, triggers cold-sensitive nerves in smokers’ throats. This cooling sensation allows smokers to inhale deeper and hold the smoke in longer. As a result, menthol cigarettes may actually be more dangerous than non-menthol cigarettes.

Brown & Williamson, former maker of the popular Kool cigarettes brand, concluded that menthol-flavored cigarettes are good starter products because young people “already know what menthol tastes like, vis-à-vis candy,” according to a company memo.

But despite the heightened health risks associated with menthol cigarettes, the CBC supported the exemption.

In fact, the close relationship between tobacco companies and the CBC is well documented.

In years past, free cigarettes were handed out at CBC meetings, and tobacco money once earned CBC member Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-NY, the nickname “The Marlboro Man.”

CBC members no longer get free cigarettes, but the financial link between the CBC and the cigarette industry remains, challenging the conventional wisdom that Republicans are the big winners when tobacco money is doled out.

During the 2008 election cycle, the Lorillard Tobacco Company, maker of the popular Newport brand of cigarettes, contributed to CBC members’ campaigns at more than twice the rate that they contributed to non-members’ campaigns.

And Lorillard is not the only tobacco company cozying up to the CBC.

Philip Morris’ parent company, The Altria Group, was the CBC’s political action committee’s largest donor in 2008. The company contributed almost twice as much to the CBC as any other corporate donor, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The question is whether the cigarette makers’ political contributions have influenced the CBC’s tobacco policy.

According to William Robinson, the director of the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network, lobbyists from the tobacco industry pressured members of the CBC to carve out the exemption for menthol.

Congressional Black Caucus Foundation senior media manager, Muriel Cooper, told the D.C. Writeup yesterday that tobacco donations to the CBC did not influence members’ support for the menthol exemption.

“There is no connection,” Cooper said.

But, as CBC member Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., has said in the past, the CBC isn’t in a good position to challenge the tobacco lobby.

“People are reluctant to criticize the giver, to bite the hand that feeds them,” Lewis once said in an interview with the Boston Globe.

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