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ing. Medical journals in particular should stop immediately the implicit advertising of alcohol which often appears in their pages concerned with eating out and such recreations. It is not long since in Birmingham the BMA itself arranged a whisky tasting evening. On the other hand, with heroin we have created a "pushers' market," and our methods for handling this problem are those which have proved disastrous in America in respect of the prohibition of alcohol. In the case of alcohol and of heroin we should set about creating a proper social atmosphere and the attitude that the use of these drugs is despicable. The use of alcohol being so disastrously established in society, we should try to check its use by severe fiscal measures and by legislation against any form of advertising. The so-called hard drugs might best be made available at a cost which will not provide anyone with a motive for pushing; they should be sold unromantically packaged in containers marked "drugs for dopes," and it should be made as inconvenient to obtain them as is compatible with the determination not to create an interest for drug pushers. Individuals have to be responsible for themselves and take the consequences of their foolish behaviour. At least a heroin addict is not likely to cause the death of anyone except himself and in this differs radically from the alcohol consumer.

Medical examiners and coroners (ME/Cs) investigate deaths important to public health. This cross-sectional study evaluated 343,412 death certificates from 2007 to 2012 in Missouri. We examined agreement between cause and manner of death by year and ME/C contact as well as 2010-2012 trends in ME/C contact. There was near perfect agreement between cause and manner of death when an ME/C was contacted (kappa=0.97, p < 0.0001) and a significant increase in the proportion of deaths with ME/C contact from 2010 to 2012 (p =< 0.0001). There was a significantly higher proportion of ME/C-certified deaths using the electronic system in 2010-2012 (aOR = 1.18, 95% CI 1.15, 1.21) compared to the manual system in 2007-2009. Black, non-Hispanic (aOR = 1.50, 95% CI 1.43,1.57) and Hispanic (aOR = 1.31, 95% CI 1.13, 1.51) deaths, compared to White, non-Hispanic deaths, were associated with a significantly greater odds of ME/C certification. Race as an independent predictor of ME/C death certification warrants further research.