Jim Hightower

The most amazing thing to me about Robert Holding, a milkman in Lancashire, England, is not that he was delivering little packets of marijuana to a few of his elderly customers along his milk route – but that the Brits can actually still get home delivery of milk!

Imagine. Our national postal service says it can’t even keep delivering our mail to us six days a week, and here’s a 72-year-old milkman still schlepping pints of cow juice door to door each day.

It was his little side business, however, that prompted British authorities to crack down on Holding. It seems that he would also drop off small bits of cannabis to 17 of his clients who requested the extra service. “They were old,” he said, “and had aches and pains.” The customers, who were pensioners ranging up to 92 years of age, would leave little notes on their stoops alongside their empty bottles, asking, “Can I have an ounce?”

Holding, who sold the stuff on the cheap side and apparently was not raking off much of a profit, felt he was doing a public service for the old folks. “They enjoyed it,” he says, “They saved a lot of money while I was doing it, and I only did it for a short time.”

Indeed, after only six months as a dealer, our Lancashire milkman was ratted out by someone. British Bobbies raided Holding’s home, found six ounces of the dreaded weed, and arrested him. Alas, while England’s marijuana laws are not quite as insane as ours, they're still unforgiving, so he was sentenced to 36 weeks in prison and given a stern lecture about the “harm” he had been doing by spreading marijuana to the old folks.

However, after the scolding, the judge noted that Holding’s wife has Alzheimer’s disease and that he visits her every day in the nursing home, thus the jail time was suspended – provided, of course, that he delivers nothing but milk.

Imagine the disappointment of his customers.