The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), itself formed by the merger of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Narcotics and the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Bureau of Drug Abuse Control, was one of the agencies that later merged together to form the Drug Enforcement Administration. The BNDD existed during an important transitional time in the history of American drug law, when several brief-lived agencies were created amid a flurry of legislative activity as the federal government responded to changes in American drug habits.

Considerably larger than its predecessors, the BNDD had a budget of more than 10 times that of the defunct Bureau of Narcotics, and operated alongside the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (as well as Customs, the Office of National Narcotics ...