What would you do?

Here is an opinion piece in the New York Times, written by a doctor who is concerned about a case before the Supreme Court in Washington State.  In the course of making his point he tells this little story:

Patients allow physicians into their private lives on the condition that the information we learn will not be used against them. I once took care of a business executive in the emergency room who had hired call girls during a weekend drug binge. When he saw a police officer outside his room, he quietly handed me an envelope containing a large amount of white powder. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, so I discarded it. For the next several hours the patient eyed me suspiciously, probably wondering whether I had ratted him out. But it never occurred to me to do so.

Hm.