The Substance Abuse Indicators Project, supported through the Maryland Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention (GOCCP) is a key component of the Maryland Drug Early Warning System (DEWS) and involves the acquisition, monitoring, and analysis of six key drug indicators in the State, utilized since 1998: (1) student drug use, (2) drug-related student suspensions, (3) treatment admissions, (4) overdose deaths, (5) substance-related traffic crashes, and (6) drug-related arrests. State-level substance abuse data were analyzed by DEWS to identify changes in trends. This report examines State-level data from the above listed six drug indicators, from 1998 to 2001. Highlighted findings include: (1) during the 2000-2001 school year, alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana were the 3 most widely used substances reported by Maryland public school 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students; (2) the only notable increase between the 1998-1999 and 2000-2001 school years was lifetime designer drug use among 12th graders, increasing from about 8 percent to 13 percent; (3) suspensions for dangerous substances made up 4 percent of total suspensions in Maryland public schools from 2001-2002; (4) suspensions due to illegal drugs increased 15 percent during 1997 to 2001 from 1,811 to 2,075 suspensions; (5) in 2002, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana were the most frequently mentioned substances of abuse among Maryland treatment clients; (6) mentions for the four most prevalent substances were at a 5-year high in 2002; (7) in 2002, there were a total of 605 overdose deaths in Maryland; (8) overdose deaths increased by approximately 24 percent over the past 5 years from 490 in 1998 to 605 in 2002; (9) in 2002, narcotics-related deaths accounted for the largest percentage of overdose, making up 84 percent of total overdose deaths in the State; (10) in 2001, there were a total of 8,754 traffic crashes involving an alcohol- and/or drug-involved driver, up from totals in 2000 and 1998; (11) alcohol- and/or drug-related injury and property damage crashes have remained stable since 1998; (12) in 2001, 52,711 drug-related arrests were made in the State; and (13) in 2001, the majority of drug-related arrests were for opium/cocaine derivatives, marijuana, and other drugs, such as synthetic narcotics and dangerous non-narcotics. Tables, charts, and appendices A-C