NM Legislature submits bill to declare official state aroma: "smell of roasted green chile"

[keopeli]

The NM Legislature is in session and had some fun with naming an official state aroma, a bill developed as part of a civics lesson for students at Monte Vista Elementary School in Las Cruces, NM.

Senate Bill 188, which is heading to the House after winning approval in the Senate, has captured national attention, including on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, whose host recently joked he thought New Mexico’s official aroma “was an abandoned RV that a bobcat is living in.”

Before the bill passed the Senate 31-4, Sen. Cliff Pirtle, a Roswell Republican, introduced an amendment to replace the smell of roasting green chile with “dairy air.”

Sen. Joshua Sanchez, R-Bosque, asked Pirtle whether he “brought any of the aroma” he was proposing for senators to sample.

“I have a pair of rubber boots hanging on the back of my truck if you want to take any samples,” Pirtle responded. “There’s plenty of samples there if you’re unaware of what dairy air smells like. There’s an abundance on those rubber boots and, in fact, on most days … I’m really tempted to wear those rubber boots in this building.”

Republican State Senator Greg Baca observed:

"Could it be that his part of the state is located a little too near Texas and that, in fact, is what he’s smelling?”

Another Republican State Senator, Greg Brandt, reflecting on NM recently legalizing recreational cannabis, commented:

“Lately, about the only thing I smell is the aroma of pot, so maybe we should have made marijuana the official aroma of the state of New Mexico,”

A Twitter commenter, @RightNewsNM, later observed:

“Next on the agenda: declaring goat heads the official torture device of New Mexico.”

More humorous commentary at the article from the New Mexico Political Report, originally from the Santa Fe New Mexican:

Link to NM Political Report article by Daniel J. Chacon