Failed Experiment: Town That Decriminalized Hard Drugs Has Banned Them 2 Years Later

A town once deemed “most hippie” in Washington when it decriminalized hard-drugs two years ago has outlawed drug use after a spike in fentanyl overdoses that included the death of a 5-year-old girl.

Edwin Williams, a city council member in Bellingham, Washington, said overdoses became so run of the mill in his city that one dead body was left on a bench for 12 hours.

“A man was sitting on the curb in a parking lot with his head bowed, right out in the open … and a police officer told me that he had been dead for at least 12 hours,” Williams said. “It shocked me to my core.”