The cultivation, trafficking and consumption of illegal drugs present a great obstacle to development in many developing countries and transition economies. Development problems foster drug cultivation and consumption, which in turn hinder the sustainable development of people and communities by exacerbating poverty, health problems and other development issues.

BMZ and GIZ are the only bilateral organisations within international and German Development Cooperation that have taken up the issue of development-oriented drug policy (DDP) systematically and supra-regionally. Development-oriented drug control places the interaction between poverty and the drug problem at the core of its approach and seeks to work with and in the developing and transition countries concerned to stem drug problems by means of sustainable poverty reduction.

Within development-oriented drug policy there are numerous interfaces with significant development policy tasks. Examples include poverty reduction, health and youth promotion, HIV/AIDS prevention, rural development, crisis prevention and conflict transformation.