Those of us feeling perturbed by the recent parade of California officials trying to undermine that state’s medical marijuana laws might find comfort in the recent trends of another medical marijuana state: Colorado.

After 53% of voters in the Centennial State approved a medical marijuana amendment in November 2000, Colorado has quietly emerged as a potential model for how states can responsibly and competently oversee the establishment of a medical marijuana industry.

There are currently more than 100 dispensing collectives statewide, an estimated 13,000 residents with valid medical marijuana cards, and 800 different physicians who have recommended them, according to recent figures. New dispensaries are being opened and considered in municipalities all over the state with little reported opposition.

When protests have been raised, municipalities have, by and large, purposely avoided the type of reactionary backlash seen in California and instead tried to strike a balance among the collectives, patients and critics through discussions and regulations—not orders to shut down. For example, several skeptical municipalities have decided to place temporary moratoriums on new dispensaries until they decide how best to regulate the establishments.

This difference between California and Colorado might best be seen when comparing some of their top lawmen. In California, L.A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley said all collectives are illegal and “are going to be prosecuted.” In Colorado, by stark contrast, Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett has said he wants to be the country’s most progressive D.A. when it comes to medical marijuana. He has even said he’s willing to consider full marijuana legalization.

And if these signs aren’t encouraging enough, the Denver Post is reporting that the tiny valley town of Ophir (population 163) will decide on Tuesday whether to consider becoming the state’s first municipality to grow medical marijuana as a way to make up for lost tax revenues.

Says planning and zoning chairwoman Sue Beresford, “A town can dream, can’t it?”

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It seems yet another California official refuses to recognize that state’s medical marijuana law, and instead wants to deny patients the treatment that’s recommended by their doctors and protected under state law.  Barely a week after the police chief of Redding, California sent a warning to local dispensing collectives about their defiance of federal law, a superior court judge in Fresno County today issued a two-week restraining order that temporarily shuts down all nine medical marijuana collectives that have opened in Fresno this year.

Judge Alan M. Simpson sided with city officials, who since August have been trying to shut down the collectives through a nonsensical zoning ordinance that requires the businesses to obey both state law (under which they’re legal) and federal law (under which they’re not). Such an ordinance is essentially impossible for the collectives to obey as long as medical marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

Lawyers for the collectives say they will argue at an Oct. 22 hearing that because state laws permit medical marijuana, local governments can’t use zoning ordinances to ban the collectives. Until then, medical marijuana patients in Fresno will be unable to safely or legally obtain their recommended treatment within city limits.

“The real winners in that will be the drug dealers and the drug cartels,” said Sean Dwyer, owner of California Herbal Relief Center, one of the closed collectives, which itself caters to 800 patients. “Because rather than being able to get their medication from us legally, they will be forced to buying it illegally off the street.”

When will California officials understand that their job is to enforce California’s laws, not the federal government’s? Medical marijuana has been legal in California since 1996. Sadly, as attorney William Logan told a local ABC affiliate, “here we are 13 years later, [still] trying to figure out how to get medicine to patients.”

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