Sneak peek: Bill targeting illicit xylazine advances in House, and other news

Happy Monday dvm360 readers! We hope that you all had a great weekend and are ready to tackle another week. As we begin to enter the dog days of summer, we are also that much closer to our next Fetch conference, Fetch Kansas City. You can join the dvm360 team and our amazing faculty for a weekend full of lectures, networking, hands on labs, and more! Also during the conference, dvm360 will be honoring our 2026 Veterinary Hero Award winners so be sure to check out the lunch for that if you are attending the show! If you want to learn more and see the agenda, events, and other things happening at the conference, you can learn more and sign up here today.

After checking out the Fetch Kansas City website, here is what you can find throughout the week on dvm360.com:

• Congressman August Pfluger's (TX-11) bipartisan, bicameral bill to combat illicit xylazine cleared the House Committee on Energy and Commerce by a unanimous vote. The Combating Illicit Xylazine Act would schedule xylazine—a deadly fentanyl additive—as a Schedule III controlled substance while preserving its legal use by veterinarians, farmers, and ranchers.
• In an interview with dvm360 filmed during the 2026 American Veterinary Medical Association Convention, Anita Patel, DVM, shares more on how veterinary professionals in all different fields, from client service team members to managers, can contribute to their organization’s leadership.
• On this week’s episode of the Vet Blast Podcast Ori Stollar M.Sc., DVM, DACVB, sits down with our host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, to chat about the 5 behaviors that every clinician should recognize.
• A Tufts study where researchers tested urine cotinine levels in 168 dogs, cats, and 1 rabbit across 4 Massachusetts towns, just put a number on something many veterinary teams have long suspected: pets in lower-income households are exposed to secondhand smoke at far higher rates than those in wealthier ones.
• In an opinion piece, Ajay Sawant, one of dvm360's 2026-2027 student ambassadors, explores how wildlife veterinarians rely on potent drugs like etorphine, medetomidine, and xylazine to sedate large or free-ranging animals—and how these compounds are increasingly restricted once they surface in the illicit human drug supply, medetomidine being the latest.
• And more!