Take a whiff – smells like New Mexico?

Roasting drums emerge on New Mexico streets and parking lots during August and September. That’s when green chile crops come in, and the aroma of chiles sizzling in the late summer air captivates many New Mexicans.

But does that mean the state should declare this enticing scent as the official state aroma?

State Sen. William Soules seems to think so. His 37th Senate district includes Hatch, the unofficial center of the green chile universe.

Soules’ Senate Bill 188 would make the smell of roasting green chiles the official state aroma.

Some Curry and Roosevelt county officials are not opposed to the idea, but they have different suggestions about odors that accompany sources of wealth in the state, and propose them with tongue in cheek and nostrils pinched.

“Dairies or feedlots,” state Sen. Pat Woods, a Broadview rancher and farmer, declared. “That’s the smell of money in my part of the state.”

Most local residents roll up the car windows when driving by concentrations of cattle and mounds of byproduct at feed lots and dairies.

Clovis Mayor Mike Morris agreed with Woods. But he also said that since up to a third of state tax revenues come from oil and gas, the state might want to consider the sulfur-laden stuff in the air around southeast New Mexico’s Permian Basin oil wells as a state-smell candidate.

Karl Terry, executive director of the Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce, said, “My other proposal for the state aroma would be a feedlot.”

Beef, he said, has a “bigger economic impact” than New Mexico’s famous chile peppers.

Terry said he is not surprised that a legislator from Hatch would call for honoring the aroma of roasting peppers, but he said that in eastern New Mexico, “we have our own peppers.”

The chile varieties grown in the state are often the same as those produced near Hatch, but “Hatch has branded theirs.”

To be fair, though, Terry said, the phrase “New Mexico green chile” has been more prevalent recently than “Hatch green chile.”

Terry also said some people he has talked to have thrown out another idea for the state scent.

“Cannabis,” he said. “Some say that could be the state aroma.”

Recreational cannabis has been legal for sale and use in New Mexico since April, but the perfume from burning marijuana buds is often compared to that from a skunk.

For that distinction, he agreed, New Mexico would be in competition with neighboring Colorado, where recreational cannabis has been legal since 2012, a full decade ahead of the Land of Enchantment.

“It’s very prevalent in Colorado,” Terry observed, “especially around ski areas.”