A variety of screening instruments for adolescent alcohol and drug abuse have been designed to be used within a clinical setting. This study adapted one of these instruments, the Drug Use Screening Inventory (DUSI), to be used within behavioral genetic or other epidemiological research on nonclinical samples. A primary goal of this study was to obtain a factor structure and set of subscales that might predict experimental and regular use of alcohol and drugs in a community sample. A secondary goal was to define subscales in a way that facilitated our interpretation and understanding of pathways to substance use and abuse. We investigated the underlying factor structure of items from four of the DUSI domains using a principal components analysis of the responses from 1266 adolescents from the Colorado Adolescent Twin Study. The resulting set of six subscales shows adequate internal consistency and provides an easily interpretable research tool for investigating etiological relationships between substance use problems and other risk behaviors.