I like to consider myself a pretty honest and law-abiding guy, but occasionally my devotion to friends puts me in a hard spot.

I got into one of these spots in 2008.

Before I begin, keep in mind that I've never used drugs in my life (not even marijuana), nor have I been involved in dealing it or anything else. I've steered clear of the entire drug culture, aside from having some friends who casually use them.

In 2008, I had a friend in Las Vegas who was a professional poker player. However, due to piss-poor bankroll management, he was busto, and desperately wanted to play the WSOP.

He found the perfect supplement to his income:

He would become a marijuana dealer.

This guy acquired large quantities of pot (not sure where he got it -- I'm assuming from a higher level dealer), and pretty much put the word out that he was the go-to guy for out-of-town poker players who wanted pot.

This wasn't a case of a guy hooking up a few friends with a few hundred dollars worth of pot. This guy had a massive supply in his apartment -- enough to send him to jail for a very long time.

I was worried for him. I tried to talk him out of it, but he dismissed my concerns. I was really afraid that I'd find out one day that he was arrested and facing five years in federal prison.

Later that summer, I did get a frantic phone call from him. Fortunately, it wasn't from jail. He was on the side of the road. He had just hit a bus while driving on the Vegas strip. The problem? His car had a felony amount of pot in it, because he was on the way to deal. He feared that, if he faced the music for the accident, the police might come and eventually discover what was in his car.

Instead, he decided to hit-and-run. He sped off and parked in a local casino garage, then fled the scene.

That's when the call came in to me.

He wanted me to pick him up and get him the fuck out of there, and then give him advice what to do.

Despite being in a really good game on Pokerstars at the time, I found it to be a no-brainer to drop everything and get my friend. I said some things to calm him down. I gave him some advice, including to get the fuck out of the drug dealing business. He claimed he needed my help to retrieve his car the next day, but he found someone else to get him over there, and I never heard exactly what happened after that. He did tell me that everything turned out fine, and that he never got in trouble for this.

But it doesn't end there.

This same friend had a bit of a beef with the owners of a certain large poker forum. Some anonymous dupe account showed up there to announce that my friend was dealing drugs to WSOP players. The thread was deleted after a few hours, but my friend feared that the owners of that forum were going to report him to the police. He called me up in a panic, and again asked for my advice. I told him to get rid of all of his drugs immediately, which he did.

He was shitting bricks, but ultimately he never heard from the police, and to my knowledge, he got out of the drug dealing business at that point.

Anyway, I've seen questions thrown out on this forum how certain players who don't appear to win and don't appear to work can keep supporting themselves in Vegas. Perhaps this sheds a bit of light.

Thank you for reading.