GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A Gwinnett County mother traveled to Washington on Thursday to push for a federal law targeting xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer dealers now mix into street drugs.
Frederica Roberson lost her son Marquavies in Gwinnett County in 2025. She says he thought he was buying a Percocet. Police told her the pills were laced with fentanyl and xylazine.
“A lot of people don’t know what this is really doing to our families,” Roberson said.
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Xylazine is a veterinary tranquilizer that dealers now mix into fentanyl and heroin. It causes open wounds that don’t heal and does not respond to Narcan. Roberson says she found out four months later, at a court hearing, that her son’s death involved xylazine.
“Can’t even explain why would somebody want to put that into any type of substance when it’s for animals,” she said.
Roberson founded the Marquavies Bernard Broughton Foundation after his death. On Thursday, she was among about 20 parents invited to Washington, where senators debated the Combating Illicit Xylazine Act, a bill that would classify xylazine as a controlled substance and allow the DEA to track where it is made and sold.
The bill could be up for a full Senate vote as early as this week. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) addressed the families directly.
“I want to let everyone who shared their painful story to us know we hear you,” Grassley said.
Roberson says being in that room is what change looks like.
“So another parent will not have to bury their child,” she said.
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