By the end of eighth grade, nearly 4 in every 10 American eighth grade students have tried an illicit drug (if inhalants are included as an illicit drug), and by twelfth grade, more than half have done so. By their late twenties, over three-fifths of today’s young adults have tried an illicit drug and 33 percent have tried some illicit drug other than marijuana. Today more than 1 in 7 young Americans have tried cocaine by the age of 30, and 8 percent have tried it by their senior year of high school. More than 1 in every 25 seniors has tried crack. Over 1 in every 16 high school seniors currently smokes marijuana daily. Among young adults aged 19 to 28, the percentage is slightly less. Nearly a third of all high school seniors had consumed five or more drinks in a row at least once in the 2 weeks prior to the survey. Such behavior tends to increase among young adults 1 to 4 years past high school. The prevalence of such behavior among male college students reaches 48 percent. Nearly one-third of high school seniors was a current cigarette smoker, and 19 percent already were current daily smokers. Despite improvement in the country’s drug situation between the late 1970's and the early 1990's, it is still true that secondary school students and young adults show a level of involvement with illicit drugs that is as great as has been documented in any other industrialized nation. There has been an emergence of new drugs whose hazards are virtually unknown. This includes the drug ecstasy (MDMA), Rohypnol, ketamine, and GHB. The drug problem requires an ongoing, dynamic response that takes into account the continuing generational replacement of children, the generational forgetting of the dangers that occur, and the perpetual additional tracking of new substances that can be abused. 94 figures, 129 tables, 5 appendixes