The Federal Republic of Germany has been cooperating with Thailand in the field of drug control since 1981, and with many other developing countries since 1990. German Development Cooperation can thus draw upon broad experience from numerous projects in partner countries. 

As part of bilateral Development Cooperation, GIZ (former GTZ) has supported alternative development projects in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, as well as in Thailand and Laos. Measures to prevent drug abuse or to strengthen drug control institutions have been promoted in Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador and Colombia for example, as well as in Thailand, India, Afghanistan, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Cooperation in this field has by no means been limited to governments, but has increasingly included NGOs and community and self-help groups, whether as part of alternative development programmes, or even more frequently to prevent drug abuse in developing countries.

The combination of intensive drug control and developing alternatives to illegal growing of opium poppy proved successful in Thailand, an important producer of opium and heroin right up to the 1980s. The UN and a number of countries – headed by the USA and Germany among others – long provided major support to Thailand with drug control and development work. Germany, for example, invested some 20 million euro – matched by the Thai side - in the Thai-German Highland Development Programme that ran from 1981 to 1998. The upshot was that the standard of living of former opium poppy producers from mountain tribes rose considerably in the 1980s and 1990s in terms of nutrition, income, health care, schools and road links to the outside world. Accordingly, opium production declined sharply (in the project areas even more than the average) and - significantly - on a long-term, sustainable basis. 

Important factors contributing to this success included an enabling political enviroment:

• a functional state, clear legislation, firm political will, and the machinery for enforcing the law; and
• a booming economy with good markets for agricultural products.

In addition, Thailand did not treat either the drug issue or its own development problems as an external matter affecting only the interests of the international community, but itself made vigorous efforts in both areas. 

There have been success stories in work with drug addicts too. In Iran a Harm Reduction project for intravenous drug users was promoted in Teheran with the aid of GIZ (former GTZ). The success of the project was measured above all by the target group's increasing acceptance of the services offered. For instance, they came to pick up sterile hypodermic syringes or condoms. It is estimated that this project has so far reached approx. 60-80 percent of the target group and it has already been assessed positively by many sources: