Time for another tobacco ad-related indie rock controversy! Remember when Rolling Stone and Camel featured a whole gang of bands in their "Indie Rock Universe" fold-out advertisement, pissing some bands off to the point where Fucked Up and Xiu Xiu actually filed class-action lawsuits against both companies?Now, Marlboro's MXBeat concert series will bring bands like Vampire Weekend, N.E.R.D., Primal Scream, and Girl Talk to Mexico. (That MXBeat website is inaccessible outside Mexico.) One problem, though: By sponsoring these shows, Marlboro may be breaking Mexican laws against advertising tobacco.A press release from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an anti-tobacco group, alleges that these shows and their advertisements serve to actively market cigarettes to kids. The shows, widely promoted throughout Mexico, will take place in four cities over the next month, culminating in a huge Mexico City festival on March 14. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids cites Mexico's 2008 General Tobacco Control Law, which makes illegal "any form of sponsorship as a means of placing the elements of any brand of tobacco products or that promotes the purchase and use of tobacco products by the population." The Campaign is calling for Marlboro to cancel the shows.Here's Campaign president Matthew L. Myers: "The government must take action to uphold Mexico's strong tobacco control law, as well as to protect Mexican youth from the influence of the tobacco industry's irresponsible and illegal marketing. With approximately 27 percent of Mexican youth smoking, we must take all possible action to uphold and enforce our laws." Since the ads for the shows carry the Marlboro name, the Campaign insists that they violate the law. Here, for instance, are a pair of ads that appeared in Mix-Up magazine, a free monthly publication:Um, yeah, that first one is pretty clearly a Marlboro ad. Even if it doesn't explicitly show cigarettes, that "Fumar es causa de cancer" disclaimer makes it pretty clear. I'm not a Mexican lawyer or anything, but the folks at Marlboro may have a legal problem on their hands here. For the bands, this whole situation isn't quite as ethically egregious as the whole Camelstonegate thing, since they presumably knew that they were signing up for a Marlboro-sponsored event. But there does seem to be a real legal issue here.