MONTPELIER – An official from the Vermont Department of Public Safety on Wednesday defended proposed new rules on medical marijuana and said fears that they will hurt hemp farmers are unfounded.

Lindsay Wells, the department’s director of a program that allows some sick people to use marijuana for symptom relief, said the rules would affect only the four medical marijuana dispensaries operating in the state.

The rules change several aspects of the way medical marijuana is regulated in Vermont. Among the changes: Terminally ill people would be exempt from the requirement that they be patients of the prescribing doctor for at least six months, and dispensaries would be allowed to deliver medical marijuana to patients.

But most of the attention during Thursday’s hearing of the Legislature’s Administrative Rules Committee was focuses on the relationship between marijuana and its botanical sibling: hemp. [Read more at the Burlington Free Press]