We can’t disagree with the state Legislature’s decision to clarify how the distance from a proposed cannabis shop to a school or church is measured.

Lifted, the city’s first cannabis dispensary, had trouble with exactly this issue before it could receive its permit from the state to open. The delay was unfortunate, but not allowing the store to open in the first place would have bordered on injustice. In the roughly 18 months since the shop opened on North Main Street there have been no issues reported and Tim Scoma, Lifted’s owner, has made the shop a regular contributor to community causes that included a Thanksgiving Dinner in November at the UCAN City Mission.

It would have been a shame to lose a downtown business because one state official used a tape measure one way while a shop in another area of the state was able to open because a different state official used the same tape measure differently.

At the same time, state Sen. George Borrello’s opposition to legislation (S.9155/A.10140) clarifying 200- and 500-foot rules raises an interesting question – when will this law be right. Sen. Jeremy Cooney, D-Rochester, pushed back on Borrello’s claim that S.9155/A.10140 was a corrective bill even though it’s obvious that the legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul corrected a flawed piece of legislative language last week..

“Imagine if every day we got on the road to go to work in the morning at 8 a.m., you look in the car next to you and you saw a guy drinking a beer, driving down the road,” Borrello said. “Or walk through a park with a babysitter that’s got a few children in tow and a big margarita in her hand or a guy taking a break from his job as a mechanic, chugging a bottle of vodka before he goes in to fix the brakes on your car. That is the world that we live in now because of the irresponsible legalization of recreational marijuana.”

The rollout for legalized marijuana was bumpier than East Second Street was last spring. This most recent tweak to the state’s cannabis laws makes sense. But it isn’t likely to be the final change. Bills to limit public use of cannabis have been introduced over the past year – though those Republican bills have little support from Democrats so far. Lawmakers from both parties have introduced legislation that includes limiting cannabis-related advertisements too close to schools; activities that can take place in dispensaries; establishing an illegal cannabis retailer directory; limiting the potency of cannabis to 15% in flowers and 25% in other cannabis or hemp products; limits on roadside signs; changes to hours adult-use cannabis can be sold for consumption; excluding volunteer firefighters and EMTs from permissive use of marijuana; increasing penalties for underage use; new drugged driving penalties; changes to the makeup of the Cannabis Control Board.

After six years the state is still trying to get things right. It makes us wonder what the state officials who wrote these laws were smoking at the time.