A politician battling to become the UK’s new prime minister admitted to smoking opium

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• A UK politician vying to become prime minister has admitted to smoking opium while in Iran.
• Conservative MP Rory Stewart, the minister for international development, told The Telegraph that the opium "had no effect" on him when he smoked it at a wedding in Iran.
• Leadership rival Jeremy Hunt also admitted to taking drugs this week, reminiscing about the time he drank a cannabis-laced drink in India.
• Incumbent Prime Minister Theresa May will step down as Conservative Party leader on June 7. Stewart and Hunt are among 11 candidates who are hoping to become the new leader, and therefore, prime minister.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

A senior UK politician gunning to fill the vacant prime minister’s office has confessed to smoking opium in the past.

Rory Stewart smoked the banned narcotic while he was travelling around Iran in his 20s, but told The Telegraph it "had no effect" on him because he was "walking 25 to 30 miles a day" during a trek across the country.

Stewart, currently the Minister for International Development, said: "I was invited into the house, the opium pipe was passed around at a wedding."

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"I thought this is going be a very strange afternoon to walk but it may be that the family was so poor they put very little opium in the pipe."

Stewart told Sky News on Thursday he knew the drug, made from poppy seeds, was illegal at the time, and apologized.

"I think it was a very stupid mistake and I did it 15 years ago, and I actually went on in Iran to see the damage that opium was doing to communities," Stewart said.

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Iran is said to have the highest number of opium addicts in the world, with the UN estimating over 2% of citizens are addicted. The drug is smuggled across from Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer of opium.

Four days before Stewart’s confession Jeremy Hunt — also vying to become prime minister — confessed to the Sunday Times he drank a cannabis-laced drink while in India.

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Incumbent Prime Minister Theresa May announced she will step down as Conservative Party leader on June 7, triggering a battle to become the next party leader, and therefore prime minister. May will step down as prime minister once a new Conservative leader is chosen.

A string of Conservative Party MPs including Stewart and Hunt, as well as Boris Johnson, have announced they are running. Johnson is considered to be a strong favorite to win the leadership.

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See Also:

• What does Theresa May’s resignation mean for Brexit?
• US companies pay ‘almost entirely’ for tariffs on Chinese products, new IMF study shows — blowing a massive hole in Trump’s favorite justification for the trade war
• ‘A matter of deep regret’: Read Theresa May’s resignation speech in full

Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Bill Bostock)