Pastor Marsha Hawkins-Hourd, a community leader in St. Louis, drives past a man standing on a sidewalk in a neighborhood known to locals as a gathering spot for drug use on Tuesday, May 18, 2021. Hawkins-Hourd describes the vacant buildings in the neighborhood as a symbol of addiction and a community thrown away. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

A man stands outside of the home of Craig Elazer in St. Louis on Friday, May 21, 2021. Elazer died from a fentanyl overdose. As the COVID-19 pandemic intensified America’s opioid addiction crisis in nearly every corner of the country, many Black neighborhoods like this one suffered most acutely. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Graffiti and boards cover the doors and windows of an abandoned home in St. Louis on Friday, May 21, 2021. In the city of St. Louis, deaths among Black people increased last year at three times the rate of whites, skyrocketing more than 33% in a year. Black men in Missouri are now four times more likely than a white person to die of an overdose. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Jerry Simmons, 49, holds his hands together before entering a new mobile help unit run by Assisted Recovery Centers of America in a church parking lot in St. Louis on Thursday, May 20, 2021. Simmons sometimes imagines himself lying in one of those vacant houses where he sleeps, dead for days from an overdose before anyone discovers him. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Brenda Fowler, right, of Ferguson, Mo., waits for a package of food from Ken Jenkins, left, at a community food distribution center where a treatment provider is working with pastors in the Black community to bring mobile treatment to the food drive in St. Louis County on Wednesday, May 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Jerome Anderson sits behind a window in a clinic where he distributes Narcan and other medical supplies in St. Louis on Wednesday, May 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Crosses line a wall in Michelle Branch's home in St. Louis on Monday May 17, 2021. Her 56-year-old brother, Craig Elazer, died of a fentanyl overdose. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Lynda Brooks, left, hugs Amy Ford in St. Louis on Wednesday, May 19, 2021. Brooks has been in recovery now for several months, and she prays for God to remain scared of the drugs. She got a job and an apartment, and proudly keeps her new keys dangling from a shoelace around her neck. Her family told her they are proud of her. She said that feels like heaven. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Paramedics help a man in distress in a parking lot in St. Louis on Saturday, May 22, 2021. He was found passed out in the middle of a busy parking lot. In the city of St. Louis, deaths among Black people increased last year at three times the rate of whites, skyrocketing more than 33% in a year. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

The Rev. Burton Barr works with inmates at the St. Louis City Justice Center on Thursday, May 20, 2021. He calls himself “the hoodlum preacher” and he goes to the jail twice a week to try to save people from the addiction that consumed his life for 22 years. The face of addiction then was inner-city Black people like him, and they were criminalized. Barr once tried to tally the number of times he went to jail, and he stopped counting at 30. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Jamilia Allen, 31, talks about how she has been beaten down by the streets, raped and assaulted in her effort to make money for drugs, during a visit to a harm reduction mobile unit in St. Louis on Friday, May 21, 2021. “I’m not going to let this kill me, and if I can help anyone else,” she said, "then that’s one less person like me.” She was once an honor roll student and the captain of her high school cheerleading squad, and back then she judged people desperate for drugs. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Pastor Marsha Hawkins-Hourd poses for a portrait outside a vacant building in St. Louis on Tuesday, May 18, 2021. She is part of a network of faith leaders and grassroots activists trying to overcome the distrust people have for the systems that typically address addiction but are infested with systemic racism, she said. She sees all the vacant buildings as a symbol of her neighbors who were deeply traumatized, then abandoned with limited access to treatment. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Lynda Brooks stands with others on the porch of an addiction recovery house in St. Louis on Wednesday, May 19, 2021. Brooks, a 55-year-old grandmother, had been addicted to crack for decades. She was often homeless and life out there was hard. She was assaulted, spit on, her husband died. So she took more drugs to escape feeling sad or scared or worthless. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

A person sits on a door stoop near downtown St. Louis on Thursday, May 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

A ferris wheel glows in the evening near downtown in St. Louis on Wednesday, May 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

A man receives Narcan and other medical supplies from a mobile window during a harm reduction effort in St. Louis on Friday, May 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Natisha Stansberry cries as she holds a locket of her child close to her chest in St. Louis on Monday, May 17, 2021. Stanberry was a victim of childhood sexual assault and her brother was murdered. She was told during a drug test that rat poison and fentanyl were found in her urine test when she went to Assisted Recovery Centers of America for help with her drug addiction. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

People gather on a front porch in north St. Louis on Friday, May 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Painted hand prints are seen on a door near a mobile care effort to hand out Narcan in St. Louis on Friday, May 21, 2021. In the city of St. Louis, deaths among Black people increased last year at three times the rate of whites, skyrocketing more than 33% in a year. Black men in Missouri are now four times more likely than a white person to die of an overdose. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Jerry Simmons, 49, holds a cup just before he takes a drug test in a restroom in St. Louis on Thursday, May 20, 2021. “I just want to be a normal person back in society, working, living, loving, playing with my grandkids, making my kids be proud of me,” said Simmons, who’s been addicted for 30 years, homeless and in and out of prisons. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Michelle Branch, center, holds a pamphlet from the memorial service of her younger brother, Craig Elazer, 56, along with Elazer's stepdaughter, Shatia Jones, right, and niece, Alexa Sanders, in St. Louis on Monday, May 17, 2021. Elazer had struggled all his life with anxiety so bad his whole body would shake. But because he was Black, he was seen as unruly, not as a person who needed help, Branch says. He had started taking drugs to numb his nerves before he was old enough to drive a car. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Carleton Smith sits on the couch of his mother's home in St. Louis on Friday, May 21, 2021. Smith, a cousin of Craig Elazer, found him dead after a fentanyl overdose in September. He looked through the mail slot and saw him lying there. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Demetrius Poindexter, 40, of St. Louis, lifts his shirt to show a bullet hole scar in St. Louis on Saturday, May 22, 2021. Poindexter says he was shot during a drug deal gone bad. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Lynda Brooks speaks during an interview on the porch of an addiction recovery house in St. Louis on Wednesday, May 19, 2021. One day last summer, Brooks went into a bathroom to smoke what she thought was crack. She felt strange, sat down and remembers only darkness. Once she was revived from a fentanyl overdose, she wondered if she’d been in hell. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

A sign painted on the side of a corner store reads, "Drugs... the new Slavery!" in St. Louis on Friday, May 21, 2021. As the COVID-19 pandemic intensified America’s opioid addiction crisis in nearly every corner of the country, many Black neighborhoods like this one suffered most acutely. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

A man is reflected in a side mirror of a mobile help unit as he receives medical supplies during a harm reduction effort in the city in St. Louis on Friday, May 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)