The medical marijuana issue continues to fascinate me, this time by illustrating so clearly how differently the public and private sectors work.

It’s been a little while since we’ve heard much about the medical marijuana issue in Colorado.

The uproar of the early part of the year seemed to burn out a little bit with the close of the legislative session.

Perhaps a sign of the times is that Littleton’s Hemp Center quietly joined the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce. By quietly, I don’t mean that anything sneaky was going on. I simply mean that even with all the hoopla that surrounded medical marijuana businesses, the Hemp Center’s application for chamber membership took only a few minutes, according to Chamber President John Brackney.

One of the interesting things we learned throughout the medical marijuana debate was that we were dealing with a couple kinds of businesses here. We have dispensaries operating under a purpose-driven model that supports the medical benefits of marijuana, and then you have opportunists who seem to only wink at the word “medical.”

I have spoken to local policy makers who were approached by dispensary owners asking why they were hated so much and who were upset about being lumped in with the poorly run dispensaries that seemed to be giving the entire industry a bad name.

Now we’re seeing that there are also two distinct arenas in which these businesses operate: the public policy world and the world of private enterprise, and the latter seems to be much more level headed than the former.

Whether you like the idea of medical marijuana or not, there are good businesses built around the dispensary industry and they are rightfully finding acceptance in our commercial landscape. And on the flip side, there are dispensaries that aren’t operating with the same sense of duty to medical care and the world of private sector businesses will likely sort those out as well.

It’s no different than any other industry. There are some restaurants you stay away from and others you don’t think twice about taking your kids to. There are lots where you’ll browse for a new car and others you just don’t trust. Some businesses have credibility, others don’t.

It doesn’t mean that the debate about medical marijuana is over, not by a long shot. But that debate was a political debate that caught a number of well-meaning and well-intentioned entrepreneurs in the crossfire.

And once again, the private sector may be the voice of reason that the public sector can learn from.

Jeremy Bangs is the managing editor of Colorado Community Newspapers.