The legislature voted to override the veto.

Paul LePage, Maine’s irascible Tea Party Republican governor, is no friend of marijuana. He opposed the state’s successful 2016 marijuana legalization initiative, and, once it won, vetoed the legislature’s bill to implement the will of the voters. That was last year.

That left the state with pot possession and personal cultivation legal, but no way to buy or sell legal marijuana. This year, the legislature once again passed a bill to implement the initiative’s taxed and regulated sales provisions, LD 1719. It even incorporated some of LePage’s previous criticisms, resulting in a bill more restrictive than what voters approved.

Again, LePage vetoed the bill. But this time, the legislature had had enough. On Wednesday, the House voted 109-39 and the Senate voted 28-6 to override LePage’s veto, poking a thumb in the governor’s eye and setting the state on a path to the legal sale and production of recreational marijuana some 18 months after voters approved it.