This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In a collaborative, jointly-funded city and county operation, Operation Diversion intended to open treatment beds for drug users in Salt Lake City instead of sending addicts to jail.

In its initial enforcement phase, police swept the Rio Grande neighborhood and offered drug offenders the opportunity to begin inpatient treatment. Of the 68 people "diverted" from jail beds to treatment beds in three sweeps, six had graduated and 54 had fled by mid-May.

The program, though, is threatened by high demand and limited resources. With only 10 detox beds and 52 treatment beds available, waitlists have ballooned. The free beds have been increasingly filled with people who self-report to a social worker, and those waitlists are ballooning as well. Walk-ins are completing treatment at a higher rate.

Sheriff Jim Winder is well-known for his "You need to catch them to cure them" philosophy. But if self-reporting addicts complete treatment more successfully, is the "catch" really the best way to the "cure"?

Winder, meanwhile, is on his way out, snagging a new post as the police chief down Moab way. Perhaps the new sheriff will recognize that outreach programs and community education encouraging self-reporting might be a better approach for successful treatment.

Regardless of which approach is used, it is clear Utah needs more treatment beds. Medicaid funds would fund more treatment beds. In 2015 the Utah Senate passed Gov. Gary Herbert's proposed expansion of Medicaid called Healthy Utah. The Utah House killed it. The House rejected available federal funds but failed to fund the problem itself.

The Legislature's paltry offering in 2016 of small-scale Medicaid expansion was meant to capture federal funds for this exact population – Utahns in need of drug and mental health treatment. The plan, however, is caught in bureaucratic no-man's land, likely because the federal government has never approved a plan with targeted populations like single adults with drug and mental health problems.

In fact, the federal government told legislators it would not approve a program with a cap on dollars or number of individuals served. Thus, the taxes Utahns have paid under the Affordable Care Act have not been returned to the state.

The old refrain should be modified: No taxation without good representation.

The residential treatment programs need more money. Medicaid expansion is key to this. Even the $100 million from the small-scale expansion could reverse the direction of chaos and blight in the Rio Grande neighborhood. But that expansion is stalled, and it's time for the Legislature to readdress the problem.

Money isn't the bottom line. Neither are conservative principles. Humanity is. Our neighbors need our help. Addicts swept up in the Operation Diversion found that the most surprising aspect of the operation wasn't the large-scale arrests but the kindness they were treated with. A lunch and some candy, a lawyer and hope.

Utah's principled House members who refuse to expand Medicaid should visit these treatment centers, and the desperate men who line up outside waiting, hoping, for a bed. Compassionate conservatism can do better than 62 beds.