The parents of a 17-year-old ask you to recommend medical marijuana for their daughter, who was injured in an auto accident six months ago and still has back pain. Hydrocodone and acetaminophen initially helped, but the patient stopped taking the medication because of unpleasant side effects. She told her parents she smokes marijuana "for fun" on weekends and believes it improves the pain. Her parents say they also think medical marijuana would be helpful for their daughter's back pain. They smoke legal marijuana recreationally and feel like it’s a benign drug. This scenario is becoming more common.

With Tommy gone, without my head wrapped around his caregiving, my nights on the couch are starting to fray. I'm getting lonely. I admit that evenings out to theatre, to dinner, to the event I just ordered tickets for, are becoming more appealing. I'm managing my dislike for nighttime driving by using taxicabs. I'm adjusting to getting gussied up as the sky darkens. To prevent head- and eye-droops as the evening wears on, I take catnaps. Slowly, I’m peeling this small and stubborn body off the couch.

Senator David Vitter: A bill to prohibit certain abortion-related discrimination in governmental activities; a bill to prohibit family planning grants from being awarded to any entity that performs abortions; a bill to impose admitting privilege requirements with respect to physicians who perform abortions; a bill to require states to implement a drug testing program for applicants for and recipients of assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program; a bill to clarify eligibility for the child tax credit; a bill to prohibit discrimination against the unborn on the basis of sex or gender.

Joan L. Cannon writes: Maybe what is required is for our culture to teach us how to know when the occasion legitimizes a free response. Tears still are the most common, even the most allowable demonstration of emotion, and nowadays some men can let them fall without feeling utterly shamed. On the other hand, joy, gratitude, tenderness, empathy seem to have built-in limits even now.

One reason for this is what we might call the divorce echo effect. Older individuals are more often in remarriages, not first marriages, and remarriages have long been more likely than first marriages to end through divorce. People who have been divorced in the past are more willing to divorce again in the event a marriage becomes unsatisfying. In contrast, some proportion of those in first marriages are unwilling to divorce even if they have an unsatisfying marriage.

Nearly 42 percent of US adults who drink also report using medications known to interact with alcohol, based on a study from the National Institutes of Health released January 16, 2015. Among those over 65 years of age who drink alcohol, nearly 78 percent report using alcohol-interactive medications.

The more pictures women share through their mobile phones, the more emails they send and receive, and the more frequently they use Twitter, the lower their reported stress. Compared with a woman who does not use these technologies, a women who uses Twitter several times per day, sends or receives 25 emails per day, and shares two digital pictures through her mobile phone per day, scores 21% lower on our stress measure than a woman who does not use these technologies at all.

Wu, lead author of the study, explains that the plot behind a movie like Her (released in 2013) becomes increasingly realistic. The film involves a man who strikes up a relationship with an advanced computer operating system that promises to be an intuitive entity in its own right."The ability to judge personality is an essential component of social living — from day-to-day decisions to long-term plans such as whom to marry, trust, hire or elect as president," said Cambridge researcher Stillwell.

Quotations, toys, and other graphic advertising materials prompt visitors to think about the different ideas embodied in the words "house" and "home." The exhibition showcases domestic objects from cooking utensils to telephones and traces how household goods tell the stories of our family traditions, heritage, and the activity of daily living.

Roberta McReynolds writes: A book about how to read tea leaves was brought to the table. When our cups were empty, my mother and I were instructed to flip them upside down and spin them around three times before turning them upright again. My mother tried to discern shapes in the dregs which were looked up in the book for interpretation. This fortune-telling seemed a tad wicked to me at the time, but still tempting as the forbidden fruit.

FDA has found hundreds of products that are marketed as dietary supplements but actually contain hidden active ingredients contained in prescription drugs, unsafe ingredients that were in drugs that have been removed from the market, or compounds that have not been adequately studied in humans. FDA has found weight-loss products tainted with the prescription drug ingredient sibutramine. This ingredient was in an FDA-approved drug called Meridia, removed from the market in October 2010 because it caused heart problems and strokes.

From junior high school hygiene films to websites, public health campaigns, scientific studies, children’s books, bodice-ripper novels and (sometimes) parents, Americans have always found ways to learn about sex. While attitudes towards sex education swing from the blissfulness of ignorance to the empowerment of liberation — and back again — every generation finds new ways to answer the old questions. Our desire to learn about desire has not changed.

Rose Madeline Mula writes: Something was definitely wrong with this picture. Earrings, nose rings, eyebrow rings, bizarre hair-dos, purple nail polish ... on the boys. Even weirder, one of them was actually wearing a bathrobe and slippers. I swear. The others sported second-skin-tight bicycle shorts or kaleidoscopic, ridiculously baggy pants obviously stolen from Barnum & Bailey.

State politicians turned their attention to pressing health care issues such as preventing drug overdose deaths, restricting e-cigarettes and making medical marijuana more available. States also grappled with the question of who should receive a costly and highly effective cure for hepatitis C. A few states also launched programs aimed at controlling two of the costliest chronic conditions — asthma and diabetes.