After finally reading this thread, a couple of thoughts:
1, everyone knew mints were used in 2005. It wasn't a "yes they did" "no they didn't!" thing. It was said as fact by both parties, those which accused of wrong and those which said no wrong happened.
2, the suggestion that sucking sweets is in any way either wrong or remotely possible to ban is utterly ludicrous. Any more than that of using certain types of suncream to enhance the quality of sweat to shine the ball. You either ban using saliva\sweat on the ball completely or you stop making such a stupid fuss when someone uses something to enhance the quality of those natural products.
3, Jones, who apparently genuinely said "we didn't" rather than "who the &$£@ cares if we did? There's nothing wrong or illegal about it" when Bracken first mentioned it doesn't exactly look good now. Either he or Trescothick could have thought about that.
4, as stated ad nauseum, 2005 wasn't the first or last time such sweet-sucking was done, nor use of certain suncream on oft-sweating areas like the forehead. And England, and other teams, have swung cricket balls with and without help from this many, many times.