An infusion of governmental intrusion might be the solution.

Today at NA Health, Healthblogger considers a recent report in the local media to the effect that a handful of public figures and politicians in the city of Jeffersonville are considering some form of a smoking ban in public places.

Here’s the article: Smoking Ban.

There is little doubt that smoking contributes to significant health related problems and that it costs taxpayers and anyone who pays insurance a significant amount of money.

But is it Government’s role to legislate this in private businesses? As most people know who have read my comments, I believe in less Government intrusion and more in personal choice and responsibility.

Previously, NA Confidential covered some of the same ground in Smoke 'em if you got 'em, says the 'Bune -- but not while you're pumping that $3.00 a gallon gas.

On the topic of government intrusion versus human imperfection, I’ve been waiting for a while to post the following, which has come back to me every time I've picked up Rally’s and White Castle litter from the street in front of our house, or when I've noticed the gum on the sidewalk and cigarette butts scattered everywhere throughout the parking lot at work.

It is reprinted from The Economist’s “The World in 2005.” As is the newspaper’s habit, individual authorship is not indicated.

Nobody was more intimately acquainted with or eloquently responsive to the grubbiness of Dublin than James Joyce. “Dear, dirty Dublin,” he called it. But the great novelist would barely recognize the place if he saw it today. It’s not just the turbo-charged economy, the sky-high property market and all the other trappings of rude good health that, in “The World in 2005’s” ranking, make Ireland such a terrific place to live. It is also setting the pace in cleaning up the urban environment.

In 2004 it banned smoking in pubs and outlawed drinking in the street. In 2005 it may well become the first country in the world to introduce a tax on chewing gum.

The government has announced plans for a levy of 10% on every one of the 80 million or so packets of chewing gum sold annually in Ireland. The 4-million Euro ($5 million) this would raise would be used to help fund the cost of cleaning the republic’s gum-encrusted streets.

A tax on plastic shopping bags has already been a great success in Ireland. Similar plans are afoot to reduce fast-food packaging and ATM receipts. “Dear, dirty Dublin” may soon be a place you can only read about in books.

Finally, a solution to the sanitation impasse! If we tax the sources of litter, we'll have enough money to pay workers to pick it all up.

Even Congeal Taxpayer might approve.