Finland’s prime minister says she’s taken a drug test to prove she has not taken any illicit substances after leaked videos of her partying with a pop star left her dealing with the mother of all political hangovers.
Sanna Marin, 36, has come under scrutiny in her Nordic homeland after clips showing her dancing with friends earlier this month were published and shared widely across social media. One video allegedly shows the married leader dancing closely with Finnish singer Olavi Uusivirta, while another features someone shouting “flour gang”—an apparent reference to cocaine—in the background, according to local media reports.
A European prime minister hasn’t caused this much of a stink just by partying since Boris Johnson’s staffers were drunkenly spewing up in Downing Street. Amid growing outrage from her political opponents and even lawmakers in her own coalition about the possibility that she’d taken drugs, Marin said she’d willingly submitted to a drug test on Friday.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I did nothing illegal,” Marin said at a Helsinki news conference Friday. “Even in my teenage years I have not used any kind of drugs.” Marin—who became Finland’s youngest ever prime minister at just 34 when she took office in 2019—added that she is entitled to be presumed innocent while waiting for the results of the test.
Aside from the question of possible drug taking, reporters pressed the center-left politician on whether she would have been able to act decisively after a long night of carousing. “I don’t remember a single time that there was a sudden situation in the middle of the night to go to the State Council Palace,” Marin insisted, referring to the Finnish government’s headquarters. “I think my ability to function was really good. There were no known meetings on the days I was partying.”
Marin added that while she knew she was being filmed on the night of her partying, she was upset that the videos had been published. “I trust that people understand that leisure time and work time can be separated,” she said.
After the first videos of Marin getting drunk dropped, the imbroglio had second wind when a Finnish tabloid published a second round of footage on Friday. It shows Marin dancing with a man, identified as Uusivirta, who repeatedly leans in close to her neck in a bustling Helsinki nightclub.
“It looks to me as though he is just trying to speak into my ear,” Marin said. “It is the case that I am married. These are private matters and I won’t comment on them. But I don’t think there is anything inappropriate happening in that video.”
This isn’t the first time Marin has been in trouble over getting close to others in nightclubs. In December, she apologized for going clubbing after being near her foreign minister, who had tested positive for COVID-19. She was initially told she didn’t need to isolate at the time, but later missed a text message advising her to avoid social contact.
