A wave of medical marijuana dispensaries recently opened on Capitol Hill won’t be pushed back just yet but any hope of a near-term overhaul of state laws has died in Olympia, the Seattle Times reports:

An intensive effort to overhaul Washington’s medical-marijuana law died Tuesday in Olympia, leaving cities and law enforcement to muddle through changes that will clip short the boom in dispensaries.

Medical-marijuana champion Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles said lawmakers were too focused on the state budget to fix confusing provisions left over from Gov. Chris Gregoire’s partial veto of an earlier bill.

“By far, this represents the greatest disappointment of my legislative career,” she said in a statement. She plans to take up the issue again next year.

As a result, a law will take effect in July that allows 45-plant collective gardens for the first time while undercutting dispensaries’ best legal defense. Cities around the state will have to choose between tolerating dispensaries or cracking down.

For now, it seems the City of Seattle won’t be actively shutting down the dispensaries — new or old. The West Seattle Blog’s statement from City Attorney Pete Holmes:

The Governor’s ill-advised veto not only further confuses the legal landscape for medical cannabis, it forces local governments to go it alone. We do not have the luxury of ignoring law enforcement’s need for guidance in regard to proliferating dispensaries and grow operations. I am committed to working with our County Prosecutor, the SPD, the Mayor and City Council to find a way for authorized medical cannabis users to obtain their medicine without sacrificing public safety. State and federal authorities have only further complicated this difficult goal, but Seattle will find a way to make a bad situation tolerable.