Against the backdrop of a long-standing lack of official sources of reliable information on illicit drug production, trafficking and abuse among countries in the region, there have been several media and anecdotal reports regarding the widespread abuse of counterfeit Captagon tablets (containing amphetamine) among all parties engaged in armed violence in the Syrian Arab Republic. Significantly, for the first time in six years, the Afghanistan Opium Survey 2015, for which the executive summary is available, notes that there has been a decrease in the estimated total area under illicit opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, which in 2015 totalled 183,000 hectares (ha). That represents a decrease compared with 2014, when cultivation reached record levels, at 224,000 ha.