Germany and the
The U.S. perception from the 1920s that Germany had become an ally rather than an adversary with regard to drugs remained largely intact during the postwar years. For example, whereas the Treasury Department Bureau of Narcotics dispatched five agents to aid MacArthur's staff in Japan during the 1940s, only one agent was sent to Germany "to assist in reestablishing the drug control system." 1 Although U.S. authorities altered the administrative structure of German drug control efforts during the 1940s, with few exceptions they left the substantive provisions of the country's Opium Act of 1929, as amended, in place. Following the occupation and through the 1950s and 1960s, the United States sought German cooperation in curtailing drug abuse within the U.S. military and in facilitating the broader American agenda under the auspices of the United Nations. During the Nixon drug wars, German drug policy expanded to include efforts against the Turkish and Southeast Asian heroin trade. In the mid-1980s during the Reagan-Bush drug war, German authorities took steps against the drug and financial activities of the Latin American cocaine cartels. In 1989, following the lead of the Bush administration, Prime Minister Helmut Kohl not only pledged a substantial support package for Colombia but began to institute a new National Drug Control Program.