Substance Abuse Counselor Requirements in New Jersey: Credentials, Hours and Exams

New Jersey runs two state credentials: the CADC, a certificate, and the LCADC, a licence.

The Act protects both the practice and the specific titles a person may use, including "substance use disorder counselor" and "chemical dependency counselor" among the names it restricts to a certificate- or licence-holder.

Both are issued by the State Board of Marriage and Family Therapy Examiners on the Committee's recommendation, not by a private board.

A New Jersey-licensed health care provider who, within their own scope, diagnoses and treats drug or alcohol disorders, or both — the rule's examples include a physician, advanced practice nurse, psychologist, clinical social worker or professional counselor — must be issued the LCADC once the Committee finds them in good standing with equivalent education, training and comparable experience; that route waives only the written and oral exams, not the education and experience requirements.

Section 8 was amended in 2023 (2023, c.177, s.132); the statute's saved text carries no markup showing which of its listed titles the amendment added, so this page does not guess.

The CADC sets no degree floor at all: the rule accepts "a bachelor's degree or an associate's degree or a high school diploma or a certificate of high school equivalency."

On top of that, the CADC needs 270 hours of alcohol and drug education split into five 54-hour domains — assessment, counseling, case management, client education and professional responsibility — with at most 54 of those hours by distance learning, plus 30 self-help meetings, at least five each in Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and Al-Anon.

The LCADC adds a graduate credential on top of the same coursework and hours: a master's degree in counseling, or a master's in an addictions or counseling-related area with at least 18 graduate semester hours in counseling across the ten content areas the rule lists.

Nothing in the sections read lets a bachelor's substitute for the LCADC's master's degree.

Both tiers need 300 hours of supervised practical training distributed across 12 core functions, which may overlap with the work-experience hours below and may span more than one agency or supervisor.

Both also need two years of supervised work experience within the five years immediately before applying, paid or voluntary, directly with alcohol or other drug clients.

A full-time year counts as 1,500 hours over a 50-week period, and hours over that yearly total may not be carried into the next year — extra hours in one year do not shorten a later one.

Part-time work qualifies only if it totals at least 3,000 hours within the five-year window.

Continuing education, unsupervised work and formal schooling cannot substitute for these hours.

Both the CADC and LCADC require a written examination developed by the ICRC (or its successor) and an oral examination, also ICRC-developed, on the applicant's own written case presentation.

An application is deemed abandoned if it sits incomplete for 12 months, or if the applicant does not sit for or pass the written or oral sections within 12 months of being notified they are eligible.

After a third unsuccessful attempt at either section, the applicant may not try a fourth time without first completing coursework in the subject matter the exam showed as a weakness.

The health-care-provider route into the LCADC is the one exception: it exempts the applicant from both exams, but not from the education and experience requirements.

An intern must work under a "qualified clinical supervisor," and the rule names exactly who qualifies: an LCADC, who since June 2, 2021 must also hold a Certified Clinical Supervisor (CCS) credential from an ICRC member board; a New Jersey physician certified by ASAM or a psychiatrist with added chemical-dependency qualifications; an APN, psychologist, LCSW, LMFT or LPC who holds the CCS; or a dual-licensed LCADC who also holds one of those other licences.

That last route carries its own conditions: the person must be deemed a qualified supervisor by the OTHER licensing board, and must have three years of clinical experience in alcohol and drug counseling, including internship hours, with at least one of those years coming after they held the LCADC.

The Committee may waive the CCS for this dual-licensee route only case by case, and only where the other licensing board has no statutory or regulatory requirement qualifying its licensees to supervise clinical mental health services.

Supervision itself runs at least 50 hours a year face to face, no more than 25 of them in a group.

The Act's independent-practice rule is narrow: it governs only independent practice for a fee, reserving that to the LCADC or to a CADC working under an LCADC's supervision.

N.J.A.C.

13:34C-6.1 defines "supervised practice" and "supervised agency practice" as alcohol and drug counseling performed by a CADC under clinical supervision or within a licensed treatment facility, and defines "clinical supervision" itself as covering an alcohol and drug counselor intern and/or a CADC — so the chapter plainly contemplates CADCs practising under supervision.

The saved sections do not state a separate, general rule that every employed CADC must be supervised outside the fee-for-independent-practice rule in 8c; this page does not claim an employed CADC works unsupervised, only that no standalone employment-supervision mandate is spelled out.

For interns, the rule runs the other way and is explicit: supervisors must co-sign diagnostic summaries, treatment plans and reports, and all diagnoses must be made by the supervisor, never delegated to the intern.

Whether a CADC past the intern stage may diagnose independently is not stated in the sources read.

APCBNJ, the Addiction Professionals Certification Board of New Jersey, is the state's IC&RC member board; it issues its own reciprocal ICRC credentials — an ADC-level CADC, plus CCS, CCJP, prevention and peer credentials — separately from the state Committee's CADC and LCADC.

IC&RC's own member-board directory says: "Both the Written & Oral Exams are required in the state of New Jersey.

Licensure applicants must be reviewed and approved by the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs.

For this reason, IC&RC cannot facilitate the reciprocity process INTO New Jersey for ADC credentials."

That statement is scoped to the ADC-level credential behind the CADC — it says nothing about the LCADC.

No section on a separate New Jersey endorsement or reciprocal-licensure pathway for out-of-state CADCs or LCADCs was read; confirm any relocation route directly with the Committee.

Both credentials renew every two years.

An LCADC must complete 40 contact hours of continuing education per biennial period to renew; a CADC must complete 60 contact hours.

The rule sets the required hours by credential tier — LCADC versus CADC.

Section 8 of the Act — the practice- and title-protection section — was amended in 2023 (2023, c.177, s.132).

The current text protects titles including "alcohol use disorder counselor," "substance use disorder counselor" and "chemical dependency counselor" alongside the CADC and LCADC titles themselves, but the statute as saved carries no strike-through or inserted-text markup, so this page cannot say which titles the 2023 amendment added versus the original 1997 Act.

Separately, N.J.A.C.

13:34C-6.2 — the supervisor-qualification rule — was amended only once, by 51 N.J.R.

1761(a), effective December 2, 2019; that amendment wrote in the LCADC's CCS requirement, with June 2, 2021 as a delayed compliance date inside the same text, plus the (a)1.i extension for a supervisor already supervising by then.

Other N.J.A.C.

13:34C sections carry their own dates — 6.1's definitions were last amended October 5, 2009, and 2.2, 2.3, 2.5 and 2.6 were last amended April 3, 2017 (2.4 carries no amendment date) — so no single date describes the whole chapter.

The rules exempt five groups, the fifth open-ended: self-help and uncompensated peer support; a private employer's or institution's designated employee, evaluating or referring only its own employees solely within that employer's or agency's jurisdiction, where the credential isn't a job requirement; clergy acting within ministerial duties; students and interns in a supervised, accredited course of study; and anyone doing this work within the scope of their own licensed profession and training — physicians, social workers, counselors, therapists, psychologists, nurses, any other State-licensed profession, and their accredited-program students — as long as they don't hold themselves out as CADC- or LCADC-credentialed.

An honorably discharged veteran's military training, education and experience can count toward either credential only once the Committee finds it, together with any non-military training, substantially equivalent in scope and character to what the rule requires; a VMET Document and, where the applicant lacks the coursework or degree, an ACE-evaluated Joint Services Transcript are how that's shown.

Every other requirement still applies, and only the equivalent portion is credited — never the exams.