Minister tries for third time lucky with gum tax

MARTIN CULLEN'S much-heralded plan to rid streets of chewing gum has begun to lose its flavour.

The Minister for the Environment yesterday unveiled, once again, proposals for a five cent levy on chewing gum to pay the huge cost of cleaning it up from streets.

With some 80 million packets of chewing gum sold every year, Mr Cullen said 500 tonnes of gum were disposed of on streets annually.