No ifs, ands or butts: If you're a smoker and want a free pack of cigarettes, show up at next week's meeting of the Libertarian Party of Manhattan.

"I don't think we're getting desperate," said party spokesman Jim Lesczynski. "But someone needs to make the political point ... that a tax on cigarettes disproportionately affects the poor, that it's a regressive tax."

To evade sales taxes, the party bought the butts from an Internet site located on an Indian reservation in western New York.

"The last thing we want to do is put even more money into the greedy hands of our elected officials," Lesczynski said.

And Libertarian officials won't deliberately give cigarettes to minors. Lesczynski said no one who attends will be asked for proof of their age. Government-issued IDs are "an invasion of privacy," he explained.

The Libertarians are scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Kennedy's Restaurant, 327 W. 57th St.

Derek Rose

Original Publication Date: 4/11/02