Seeking a solution where there is no problem, the Utah County Board of Health is working up new rules that would ban smoking in public parks.

It's part of a trend. Salt Lake City, Sandy, Logan, Spanish Fork and West Jordan have similar rules pending. Orem's City Council is scheduled to discuss the issue.

It's not clear whether the health board will seek a countywide ban, or whether it will work with individual cities to implement the smoking ban. It's also uncertain whether new measures would ban tobacco entirely or just limit smoking to designated areas.

What is clear is that this is yet another example of government meddling. It's as though officials don't have enough real problems to worry about.

The proposed rule would prohibit something that's in the process of disappearing anyway. The Beehive State has the lowest percentage of people who smoke in the United States, and Utah County has the lowest percentage of smokers in Utah: less than 6 percent of the population, according to state figures. And the percentage of smokers statewide has been declining rapidly, dropping by more than two-thirds from 1999 to 2007.

But the current discussion is not about smoking in general. The target is much, much smaller than that -- so small it's virtually impossible to see. This is about a small number of people who smoke in public parks under the big blue sky, and whose tobacco smoke in that context is said to pose a health hazard to others.

The whole premise is pretty far-fetched. Where are the data showing that this purported problem warrants the creation of new public policy? How many complaints about secondhand smoke in public parks are actually on record? Our guess is that there are few -- and possibly even none.

This measure raises numerous contradictions. How harmful to the public health, for example, is the smoke from a cigarette compared to the belching output of a charcoal barbecue? Consistency is not a hallmark of the current policy discussion.

Come to think of it, the overall air quality of Utah Valley is often unhealthy, primarily because of automobiles, industrial processes, wood-burning fireplaces and atmospheric inversions. Just ask the Environmental Protection Agency and the Utah Division of Air Quality. Overall air quality has been terrible lately. How harmful is a dissipated puff of cigarette smoke in a park compared to the dust and ash from last year's wildfires that's been blowing all over Utah County? This gunk posed a health hazard to hundreds of thousands of people on a sustained basis over several days. If government officials are so concerned about public health, they should be turning away such dust storms at the county line, not worrying about the trivial effect of an outdoor cigarette in a public park.

Clearly, even a designated smoking area in a park won't solve the non-problem of cigarettes. Offensive smoke from barbecues, exhaust from automobiles and odors of bad cooking will all drift, sooner or later, along with cigarette smoke, to somebody's nostrils.

But if smoking in a park is so bad, we'll need to include provisions to prohibit smoking upwind from any school or day-care center. Smoking will need to be banned not only in parks but within a thousand feet of one. Driving near a park, especially in any vehicle powered by a diesel engine, should likewise be banned.

You get the point. The current debate is nothing but politics. Wouldn't it be nice if policy makers once in awhile used a little common sense?

We don't defend smoking as good for anybody's health or overall quality of life. It would be nice if nobody lit up. But the rationale for the proposed ban on smoking in public parks is beyond weak. It's so flimsy that officials are already falling back to the tired old "save the children" argument. Secondhand smoke hurts children more than adults; and smoking sets a bad example.

But if we're going ban bad examples by adults, we shouldn't stop with smoking in a public park. We should ban smoking at home, too, along with other things. Every day, adults model bad behaviors such as losing their tempers, cursing, eating junk food, watching too much TV, speeding in an automobile and drinking too much alcohol at home. We'd wipe out our newsprint budget if we listed all the unhealthy things adults do in front of children.

Bottom line: Local governments have plenty of legitimate tasks to perform. Harassing the dwindling number of Utah County smokers for lighting up in a park is not one of them.

Do you agree?