A good-natured debate took place Saturday on the Senate floor and on Twitter over a proposal to make the smell of roasting green chile the official aroma of New Mexico.
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.”
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