Substance Abuse Counselor Requirements in South Dakota: Credentials, Hours and Exams

South Dakota protects the titles addiction counselor, addiction counselor trainee and addiction counselor supervisee (along with the prevention and peer support equivalents) so that only a person recognized, certified, or licensed under the chapter may use them.

The Addiction Counselor Trainee (ACT) is a recognition, not a credential, issued on application and fee; the Certified Addiction Counselor (CAC) and Licensed Addiction Counselor (LAC) both require an application, fee, and passing the board's written exam.

SL 2026 ch 163 added statutory "supervisee" titles to that protected list, but the ARSD 20:80 rules read do not yet build out a supervisee credential to match them.

No practice ban was located in SDCL 36-34: the statute protects the titles, not a stand-alone bar on unlicensed practice.

The ACT recognition starts at a high school diploma or GED.

The CAC needs the same HS/GED floor plus 3 semester hours, grade of "C" or higher, in each of 9 named subject areas.

The LAC sets a higher floor: a minimum of a master's degree in a behavioral science field, plus 3 semester hours in each of 7 named courses, at least 5 of which must be at the graduate level (addiction counseling theories and techniques; psychopharmacology or psychopathology; legal, ethical and professional standards; case management and assessment of co-occurring disorders; treatment planning; clinical supervision; and multicultural competency).

So the degree floor moves from a high school credential at the trainee and CAC tiers to a master's degree specifically for the LAC.

For the CAC, the required hours of supervised work experience drop as the applicant's degree rises: 8,000 hours with a high school diploma or GED, 6,000 with an associate's degree, 4,000 with a bachelor's degree, or 2,000 with a master's degree or above — and that degree must be in a behavioral science field and from an accredited post secondary institution.

Within whichever total applies, at least 300 of those hours must be documented supervised work experience across the 12 core functions, with a minimum of 10 hours in each function.

The LAC's hours do not slide with degree: it is a flat 2,000 hours of supervised work experience, with its own 300-hour core-function minimum documented as supervised practical training experience rather than the CAC's supervised work experience.

A CAC applicant with a bachelor's and a LAC applicant both land on hour totals within the same range, but they are counted under different rule subsections and different credentials.

Both the CAC and the LAC require passing a written examination approved by the board; ARSD 20:80:07 itself does not name the specific exam.

IC&RC's own reciprocal-credential table for BAPP fills part of that gap: it maps the CAC to the IC&RC ADC exam (ICADC reciprocal credential), and the LAC — who must have a master's degree and additional specific courses — to that same ADC exam (ICADC), or, if the practitioner instead takes the IC&RC AADC exam, to the higher ICAADC reciprocal credential.

That table describes IC&RC's own reciprocal-certification mapping, not which exam ARSD 20:80:07 itself requires.

An applicant who fails to pass after three attempts cannot simply keep retesting: the rule requires reapplying for trainee status and meeting the education, supervision, and work requirements for the credential that are current at the time of reapplication, not the ones in effect at first application.

Supervision must include a minimum of one hour for every ten hours of client contact, and no more than half of the required supervision hours may be delivered by email, internet, video-conferencing, audio-conferencing or teleconferencing.

A trainee's supervisor must be a qualified CAC or LAC and must provide at least eight contact hours of supervision each month; a trainee may not be supervised by a relative.

The supervisor of a prevention specialist trainee must generally be a qualified CPS, though the rule allows a CAC or LAC to fill in when no CPS is available, subject to agency approval.

Holding the LAC by itself does not open the door to a private independent practice.

The rule sets two conditions together: an active LAC credential, and a minimum of two years of qualifying supervised work experience in addiction counseling completed after the initial certification or licensure.

A practitioner already in independent practice before April 1, 2014 is not subject to this requirement.

Whether a CAC or LAC may diagnose a substance use disorder is not addressed in the text read.

BAPP is South Dakota's own IC&RC member board, so a CAC, LAC, or CPS may apply for reciprocity through the IC&RC, and the board may grant reciprocity at the matching certified or licensed level to a practitioner who is IC&RC-certified by another member board holding a reciprocal-level credential.

Separately, SDCL 36-34-13.5 lets the board grant a certificate or licence to anyone currently certified or licensed in another state or U.S. territory whose requirements are substantially the same as South Dakota's, provided that person has passed a similar examination.

The continuing education cycle is a two-year period running from December 1 of an odd-numbered year through November 30 of the next odd-numbered year.

A licensee must complete 40 hours of qualified continuing education in each cycle, at least 4 of which must be on counseling ethics; a licensee self-verifies completion under penalty of perjury.

Renewal on time requires an application, the renewal fee, and proof of CE compliance, all submitted before the certificate or licence expires; missing the November 30 deadline automatically suspends it.

Separately, if the practitioner did not submit a renewal application before expiration, the board must notify the holder that they may not practice addiction counseling or prevention services — but the board may still renew the certificate or licence if, within 30 days after the expiration date, the holder submits a renewal application and proof of CE compliance.

SL 2026 ch 163 did more than add "addiction counselor supervisee," "prevention specialist supervisee," and "peer support specialist supervisee" to the protected-titles list in SDCL 36-34-13.1: it also amended the definitions statute (36-34-1), the board's general-duties statute (adding new 36-34-2.1), the board's specific-duties statute (36-34-12), and the fee statute (36-34-13, adding one shared trainee-or-supervisee recognition, renewal, and reinstatement fee, not a supervisee-only fee), and it enacted 36-34-13.10, the general recognition-renewal statute already relied on above for the ACT's one-year, four-renewal limits.

The ARSD 20:80 rules read do not yet define or implement a matching supervisee credential, so a supervisee cannot yet be recognized under the rules even though the statutes now reference one.

Separately, ARSD 20:80:07:03's three-attempts-then-reapply-as-trainee retest rule carries an effective date of August 8, 2023 (50 SDR 12); the text read does not show what the rule said before, so no prior-version comparison can be verified.

SL 2023 ch 140 separately amended chapter 36-34, including the renewal statute, 36-34-13.3.