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Urban Blight

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The photograph that accompanied Letters to The Times (July 21) on the subject of graffiti focused on a foreground of graffiti on a wall near downtown Los Angeles. However, in the background there loomed an immense billboard advertising menthol cigarettes. Doesn’t this put into perspective what Americans are willing to accept? Aren’t such billboards a blight? This doesn’t make graffiti less a blight, but tobacco is a killer!

Tobacco took 425,000 lives last year (according to an article in that same day’s Times) but the industry blatantly advertises its poisonous product with nary a protest. How many people have been killed by graffiti?

ROSETTA LIVINGSTON

Los Angeles

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