Volume 40 Number 4 | August 2026
Summary
Stephanie Noblit, a medical laboratory scientist turned lawyer, applies her scientific expertise in toxicology to her current role in health policy and substance use/addiction law. She bridges the gap between science and law by interpreting drug testing and researching novel psychoactive substances to inform legal and legislative efforts.
Stephanie Noblit, Esq., MLS(ASCP)CM, ASCLS Director
I haven’t stepped foot into a laboratory since 2017, but I still utilize my medical laboratory science knowledge every day. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a medical laboratory scientist and a lawyer. After working in the toxicology lab at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for two and a half years, I decided to hang up my lab coat and transition to a life in the law after falling in love with health policy.
I absolutely loved working in the lab and was sad to leave a profession I cared deeply about, but I felt that there was a great need for more people with scientific backgrounds in the legal profession. If I could combine the two skill sets in some way, I knew I could contribute something worthwhile. Fast forward to today and I’m doing exactly that.
Currently, I work for a small, federal funded non-profit organization called the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association (LAPPA). LAPPA conducts legal and legislative research within the areas of public health and safety, substance use disorders, and criminal justice. There are a lot of very talented, smart, and passionate lawyers working in the substance use/addiction policy space, but very few of them have also worked in a toxicology lab performing drug testing. My medical laboratory science background gives me an edge and provides me with a unique perspective that’s grounded in hands on experience.
Drug testing is a topic that comes up often in the substance use/addiction policy space because it is used as a tool to gauge patient compliance. To my lawyer colleagues, a drug test is when a patient’s urine sample is sent to a lab for testing, and a result is then provided to the patient’s healthcare provider or to the courts. To them, the time between the collection of the sample and the result is basically a black hole, but I fully understand the reality of what’s happening.
I fully understand the differences between presumptive and confirmatory testing; I know about false positives, false negatives, and cross-reactivity. I can look at the results and be able to interpret what exactly the positive or negative means, clinically. I know that a negative drug screen does not necessarily mean that the patient is negative for all substances, just that the person is negative for the specific substances screened.
Understanding what exactly is being tested and the limitations of the panel are critical when interpreting drug test results. When you don’t know what you don’t know, you can’t ask questions. Part of my job is not only making sure those questions get asked and answered but also educating my lawyer colleagues about the science behind drug testing so that they, too, can ask these questions in the future.
“I take a lot of pride in being able to act as a translator between the scientific and legal world.”
My day-to-day work looks different now in comparison to when I was on the bench. I’m not a litigator, so I don’t do any work in the courts or have clients, which is what most people assume when I tell them I’m a lawyer. I spend my days reading and interpreting state and federal laws, regulations, and cases. I write factsheets; do 50-state surveys, which is when you compare the laws of every state on a specific topic; and draft model laws. I work on a variety of topics, including overdose fatality review teams, overdose reversal agent access (like naloxone), and involuntary commitment, but one of my favorite things to work on and research at work are novel psychoactive substances (NPS).
NPS are substances that mimic the effects of other illicit or prescription drugs. They are often created by clandestine chemists modifying the existing chemical structures of existing substances. The term “novel” in the phrase NPS does not necessarily mean that the substance is newly created or never seen before, however, sometimes that is the case. Often an NPS is just a substance that is newly available in the drug market or a substance that is being used in a new way or by a different population than it was traditionally created for.
For example, a lot of NPS are substances that are only FDA approved for use in veterinary medicine and are now being used illicitly by humans. Xylazine is one such example. NPS are often marketed as “legal high” or “research chemicals” and their whole purpose is to take advantage of loopholes in drug laws and evade criminality. My boss specifically gives me projects related to NPS because of my science background.
Leaving the clinical laboratory was scary, and I wasn’t sure where I was ultimately going to end up when I started law school, but I am confident now that I made the right decision. I take a lot of pride in being able to act as a translator between the scientific and legal world. I may not physically be in the laboratory anymore, but I’m constantly applying what I’ve learned in the laboratory to the law and policy. If you would like to learn more about my career journey, or about the intersections between medical laboratory science and the law, reach out! I’m always happy to share my story, and I hope to inspire others to think outside the box on where a degree in medical laboratory science can take them.
Stephanie Noblit is a senior legislative attorney at the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association (LAPPA) and is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.