FOUNDATION TO HELP TEEN SEEK PROBATION AFTER DRUG SENTENCE

MOULTON (AP) -- A Lawrence County teenager sentenced to 26 years in prison
for selling marijuana to his classmates will seek probation at a hearing
next month, aided by a Washington-based group.

Webster Alexander received the jail time for four sales, together worth
about $350, that he made to an undercover drug agent at Lawrence County
High School. It was his first drug offense.

Prosecutors have said the sentence - which Alexander, 19, agreed to as part
of a plea bargain - was warranted to make an impression on students at the
rural school.

"Certainly it makes a point, a very big point, about accountability," said
Lawrence County District Attorney Ed Osborn. School principal Ricky Nichols
said there were 26 drug and alcohol incidents at the school of 600 last year.

But Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the NORML Foundation, a
Washington-based group working to bring marijuana laws in line with alcohol
and tobacco laws, said prison terms of 10 years or more typically are
reserved for repeat offenders or crimes in which guns are used.

"Putting a young man in jail for 26 years, on the face of it, appears to be
over-punitive, too expensive to the taxpayer and of no deterrent value," he
said.

NORML will help Alexander argue his point at a March 10 probation hearing.

Alexander plans to tell the judge about how, after he was expelled from the
high school, he found a private school where he earned his diploma.

He also graduated from a drug treatment program, found a job as a
bricklayer and enrolled in Calhoun Community College.

The teen acknowledges that he sold the drugs, and that he smoked marijuana
for the first time at age 9 and began smoking regularly six years later.
But he denies prosecutors' depiction of him as a kingpin.