I was speaking this week with a new CEO of a new public company that is just being spun off from their parent company. Imagine all the important tasks on his plate involving investors and customers. And yet he told me his top priority is getting his employees engaged in the mission of their new company and helping them see how their industrial products are really becoming technology products and playing an important role in the lives of their customers.

He’s not alone. Gallup tells us that 87% of global employees are disengaged, so it should be the top priority for every CEO.

CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) - FOX 32 has learned that Illinois' first legal shipments of medical marijuana could depart from grow houses as soon as Friday.

The man in charge of the state's program told FOX 32 News that the first legal retail sales by dispensaries could come early next week, perhaps Monday. But a woman who worked tirelessly for years to legalize medical marijuana in Illinois is turning her back on the program.

Julie Falco has painful, incurable multiple sclerosis. Back when she could still walk, she was well known in the State Capitol as a tireless proponent of medical marijuana. But now with the program at the tipping point, she says she won't be part of it.

This weekend, the region’s largest medical marijuana convention series makes its first sojourn north to Maine. The New England Cannabis Network will hold the two-day event at the University of Southern Maine, giving the public the opportunity to engage with medical marijuana dispensaries, doctors and caregivers, as well as more than 60 local and national cannabis industry businesses and retailers with products for sale.

A previously planned convention in Maine was pushed back due to scheduling troubles, according to Marc Shepard, co-founder of NECANN, but the success of earlier shows in Boston and Providence encouraged their push to have it here.

The Oregon-based leaders are proving that weed is serious business.

PORTLAND, Ore. -- With recreational marijuana now legal in the state, entrepreneurs in Oregon are showing that the end of prohibition isn't just about smoking joints legally. It's good business, and the drug is both lucrative and popular in the places that have legalized it.

On July 1, Oregon joined Washington state, Alaska, Colorado and the District of Columbia inlegalizing marijuana possession. A system to buy and sell cannabis wasn't set up until Oct. 1, so the state is only just beginning to see the monetary benefits of the plant.

The battle in California to legalize recreational marijuana is heating up. An alliance of industry organizations and wealthy supporters, spearheaded by Napster co-founder and jet-setting billionaire Sean Parker, are looking to disrupt the cannabis industry just as Parker did in the music and technology industries. Sacramento political consultant Gale Kaufman and the capital political law firm Olson Hagel & Fishburn were engaged to draft the 2016 initiative.

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DETROIT, MI -- The Michigan Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from the Unemployment Insurance Agency in a case involving benefits for people fired from jobs over medical marijuana use.

The denial means people with medical marijuana cards who lost work after failing drug tests will continue to be eligible for unemployment benefits, based on an October 2014 appeals court ruling.

The Unemployment Insurance Agency appealed lower court decisions out of Macomb and Ingham counties that reversed rulings from the Michigan Compensation Appellate Commission that said fired workers were disqualified from jobless benefits.

The state appeals court in one consolidated decision upheld those rulings.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has now moved forward with his support for cannabis, filing a bill to decriminalize pot and nix it from the government’s list of most dangerous drugs.

He submitted the bill, entitled Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2015, to the Senate on Wednesday, seeking to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act. The legislation would let all 50 states decide for themselves whether they want to legalize pot for recreational or medical use without federal intervention.

The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration called the idea of medical marijuana a "joke" on Wednesday and said that smoking marijuana for medicinal use has never been proven to be safe or effective.

Chuck Rosenberg, who was appointed to lead the agency in May, made the comments at a press briefing, according to CBS News.

CODY, Wyo. — A state legislative committee plans on sponsoring a bill that would make the possession of 1 pound or more of marijuana edibles a felony.

The Casper Star-Tribune reports the Joint Judiciary Committee decided to sponsor a bill Wednesday for the 2016 session that would criminalize the marijuana-infused products.

Legislators had debated whether to separate the amount of the psychoactive ingredient THC inside an edible, because the testing of THC content in edibles is still being developed in the U.S. But the bill under consideration criminalizes THC and the edibles’ other ingredients.