CENTENNIAL, Colo. -- A medical marijuana dispensary must wait until after Christmas to find out if it can reopen after the town forced it to shut down.

CannaMart finished two days of arguments Tuesday asking for an Arapahoe County judge to force Centennial to reverse the closure of the dispensary. The city revoked its business license and ordered the shop closed a couple months ago after just six weeks in business.

CannaMart claims cities can't ban dispensaries because voters in 2000 allowed medical marijuana in the state constitution.

"If marijuana is legalized for people with debilitating medical conditions ... the supply of it must also be legal," CannaMart lawyer Robert Corry said.

Centennial attorneys have said that the city is free to prohibit businesses that violate federal law. Fourteen states, including Colorado, permit medical marijuana, but pot remains illegal under U.S. law.

District Court Judge Christopher Cross, who initially planned to rule Tuesday, said after a full day of arguments that he would need to wait until after Christmas.

A lawyer for Centennial said a decision in CannaMart's favor would chill cities struggling to regulate proliferating dispensaries.

"We're talking about whether a city can decide it does not want this land use," Centennial lawyer Andrew Nathan said.

The city said it has not banned medical marijuana, just dispensaries that sell it.

"There are plenty of other outlets for the purchase of medical marijuana available," said Nathan, who earlier in the trial showed a map of other dispensaries in the area.

Nathan pointed out that CannaMart is planning a location in nearby Littleton, less than 10 miles from where the Centennial shop site. He also asked CannaMart owner Stan Zislis why he couldn't simply deliver marijuana to clients inconvenienced by the ban.

Zislis conceded that some Denver dispensaries deliver marijuana, but Zislis said he wouldn't feel safe doing it without an armored car. He said patients wouldn't like it, either.

"It is not something the patients are comfortable with," Zislis testified. "They don't want people coming to their home."

CannaMart's lawyer argued that city fears of crime at dispensaries aren't sufficient to ban them outright.

Cross-examining Arapahoe County Sheriff J. Grayson Robinson on Tuesday, Corry pointed out a recent rash of Denver-area bank stickups.

"Fourteen banks were robbed last week. You're not here to propose that Centennial ban banks, are you?" Corry asked.

Still, robberies at medical marijuana dispensaries have been increasing and police and neighborhood residents worry that they are becoming magnets for armed criminals.

On Dec. 16, two people were injured during a botched robbery and shooting at a dispensary in Denver. Police said it was the city's first shooting at a medical marijuana dispensary. It followed a rash of 25 medical marijuana-related robberies in Denver since July, said Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson. The crimes included 13 dispensary stickups and 12 other pot-related robberies, with targets ranging from medical marijuana growing operations to home invasion robberies of medical marijuana patients.

Critics also point to Los Angeles, where the number of unregulated marijuana dispensaries exploded from 186 two years ago to an estimated 1,000 today. Along with the unchecked pot shop growth has come a wave of brazen armed robberies. In the San Fernando Valley alone, Los Angeles police say there have been at least 200 robberies at medical marijuana dispensaries in the last two years. That's an average of two robberies for each of the estimated 100 dispensaries in the valley.

In Colorado, state and local officials are struggling with how to regulate the dispensaries. The Legislature will consider statewide regulations after in convenes next year.