The signing drew a delegation from Washington, including Kathryn Burgum, co-chair of the federal initiative and senior adviser to the White House on addiction recovery; Dr. Monty Burks, executive director of the Great American Recovery Initiative and director of the Faith Center at the Department of Health and Human Services; Dr. Timothy W. Westlake, chief of staff at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; and Dr. Carisa Schweitzer Masek of HHS. The group toured The Other Side Village, a Salt Lake City recovery community run largely by former addicts, where resident Jennifer Davis described her own path out of addiction to the visiting officials.
Utah's own numbers framed the urgency. Research released by the state's Office of Homeless Services in May 2026 found that 77 percent of the state's most-arrested individuals were homeless. Cox has set a goal of cutting drug deaths and repeat homelessness-related arrests by 25 percent. The executive order coordinates homeless services, the criminal justice system, and care providers, and directs federal SAMHSA grants — for the first time — to carry "faith-friendly language," clearing the way for religious organizations to compete for funding they were once shut out of.
Burgum, who has spoken publicly about her own recovery from alcoholism, told those gathered that "this journey of addiction and recovery is all about becoming part of a community" and that "that's what the faith community does." Cox put it plainly: "There's nothing more powerful on this earth than belonging and purpose." Ben Erwin, who directs Family Services for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — which donates roughly $300,000 a year in food to Volunteers of America detox centers — said "faith, belonging, and purpose can play an important role in lasting recovery." Not every Utah lawmaker is convinced. State Sen. Jennifer Plumb, a Salt Lake City Democrat, said the state's recovery framework "should be grounded in data, evidence, and respect for individual autonomy, not in punitive frameworks."
Behind the debate over method sits a number worth sitting with: federal researchers estimate that the roughly 130,000 addiction-recovery programs connected to congregations across the country save the nation as much as $316 billion a year — not by accident, but because something happens in a room full of people who know your name and won't let you disappear.
The disease underneath the disease
Every governor's office and every federal agency can measure drug deaths, arrest records, bed counts. None of them can measure loneliness, and loneliness is the root Senator Plumb's "evidence" and Governor Cox's "belonging" are both, in their own way, circling. A needle or a bottle is never really the first thing a man reaches for. The first thing he reaches for is relief from being alone with himself. Scripture named that condition before any agency did.
"God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land." (Psalm 68:6)
Read it slow. The God of the Bible does not merely forgive the addict and send him back out the door alone. He sets the solitary in families. He brings out those which are bound with chains — not with a lecture, not with a program alone, but with a people. That is why a church basement full of broken men saying the truth about themselves out loud can do what a courtroom cannot. It is not sentiment. It is the oldest medicine there is, and it was prescribed long before anyone put a dollar figure on it.
My friend, no policy in Salt Lake City or Washington will ever save a soul. Only Christ does that. But a government that clears the way for the church to do what the church has always done — sit with the man nobody else will sit with — has at least stopped standing in the door. Scripture does not ask you to fix yourself before you come. It asks you to come. "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2) is not a suggestion for the strong to hand down to the weak; it is the whole family of God carrying each other, because every last one of us was bound with chains of some kind before grace found us.
If you are the one in the dry land tonight — cut off, alone, certain nobody would want what's left of you — hear this plainly: there is a family for you, and it was purchased at a cross, and the door has never once been locked.