MEXICO CITY – Trendy sandals and lint-free toilet paper. Life insurance. Cell phone plans. Brandy, condoms and lacy lingerie. A shampoo created by seven of the world’s best hair experts. The advertisements plaster bridges and bus stations, mailboxes and phone booths — even trees.

Mexico City lawmakers have had enough.

A proposed bill would tear down the majority of the estimated 15,000 ads blanketing one of the world’s largest cities. About 11,000 are illegal. Besides, legislators say, they’re ugly and distract drivers.

“We have to end this anarchy,” said Victor Hugo Romo, a legislator with the leftist Democratic Revolution Party and co-creator of the proposed law. “The ads are placed everywhere and anywhere.”

The law, which goes to a vote at the end of the month, would ban any advertisements on all public and private buildings.

It would relocate them to 100 spots along intersections and traffic circles.

Enforcement could be a problem. The city has spent $4.8 million in recent years to tear down illegal ads, only to have them reappear weeks later, said Julio Sotelo, Mexico City’s urban administration director.

Proponents of the bill hope that stiff penalties will do the trick this time. Under the bill, businesses would be fined up to $8,800, depending on the type of ad and the violation.

 

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