This paper presents selected research findings from Monitoring the Future, an annual series of national surveys focusing on lifestyles and drug use among representative samples of American high school seniors that has been conducted every year since 1975. The presentation focuses on two issues: aspects of lifestyle currently associated with drug use, and changes in lifestyle orientations over the past decade which help to explain some of the observed shifts in the prevalence of drug use. After an introductory discussion of the research design for Monitoring the Future, the paper presents and discusses a series of demographic tables that show cross-sectional relationships between several forms of drug use and the following characteristics: (1) deviance; (2) propensity for risk taking; (3) religious commitment; (4) attachment to school; (5) time spent out of the home; (6) healthy lifestyle orientation; and (7) counter culture orientation. The last table is a measure of the cumulative variance explained by lifestyle factors. These results suggest that several forms of licit and illicit drug use are related to a wide array of different lifestyle characteristics. (TE)