INMATE SHEDS WEIGHT IN POT LAW PROTEST

Germantown man decries `unjust' system

A Germantown man who has fasted since September to protest marijuana laws
has lost almost 100 pounds, but authorities say the man remains in good
health.

``I came in weighing 265 pounds, and now I weigh 167. I look really
strange. I've lost quite a bit of muscle," Thomas Kenneth Osborne said
yesterday.

In early December he was consuming about 500 calories a day to protest the
charges against him, but for the past three weeks he has consumed only
``coffee, water, Rolaids and vitamins," he said.

When discussing his fast, Osborne oscillates between talking about
precautions - such as maintaining proper electrolyte levels and taking
vitamins - and risking death for his cause.

He called drug laws hypocritical.

``If I were to lose my life and make a difference, I would die a happy man
because some difference needs to be made."

``Mr. Osborne is emaciated, and he has made up his mind if he doesn't get
out of jail, he's determined to die," said Osborne's attorney, Barry H.
Helfand.

Osborne, 59, injured his back in 1975 and says marijuana is the only
effective pain killer he has found. Police raided Osborne's house in the
8300 block of Hawkins Creamery Road on Sept. 11 and found ``38 marijuana
plants that represent anywhere from 38 to 76 pounds of processed
marijuana," according to court documents.

Osborne pleaded guilty Friday in Montgomery County Circuit Court to
maintaining a common nuisance and faces up to five years in prison. He will
be sentenced tomorrow by Judge Vincent E. Ferretti Jr.

If Ferretti sentences him to the time he has spent in jail, Osborne said,
he plans to continue fasting at least a week, but if he is sent to jail or
to prison, he plans to fast indefinitely.

``I don't want to sound like I'm threatening the judge, I'm not. It's just
that this is an unjust law that needs protesting," Osborne said.

Osborne called the police assessment of the amount of marijuana found in
his his house ``preposterous" and said plants grown indoors rarely yield
more than 1 ounce of dried marijuana each.

``If you know anything at all about growing pot inside, you know there's no
way on God's green earth to get 2 pounds of pot from a plant," Osborne said.

He grew plants because, after years of experimentation, he had found a
strain especially good at relieving pain.

Helfand, who has represented Osborne on marijuana charges before, said he
hoped his client would move to California when this case is over ``because
they don't care so much about the marijuana laws out there."

Osborne has pleaded guilty twice before to marijuana charges and has long
claimed a right to use marijuana as a medicine.

A Montgomery County court fined Osborne $10,000 in October 1991 and
sentenced him to four years in prison for possessing cocaine and marijuana.
In April 1987, he received a sentence of 18 months and was ordered to
undergo drug therapy.

Photographs of Osborne's house show the September raid yielded a sea of
marijuana plants, and police found 2.7 ounces of pressed powdered cocaine
and drug paraphernalia, according to police records.

``This operation consisted of numerous rooms that had large fans,
high-intensity halogen lights, sprayers to water the plants, plant food, a
`Burgess Bug Killer' machine, power cords, pots and soil and a [carbon
dioxide] tank," according to court documents.

``He has lost a lot of weight but we have continued to monitor his caloric
intake and weight loss. He told us he is not on a hunger strike, but is
making a concerted effort to lose weight and to protest the marijuana
laws," said Russell E. Hamill Jr., acting director of the Department of
Correction and Rehabilitation.

Assistant State's Attorney Margaret Schweitzer, who is prosecuting this
case, was unavailable for comment.