Ohio Chemical Dependency Professionals Board

About this board

Addiction counseling in Ohio uses a tiered credential ladder — CDCA (assistant), LCDC II, LCDC III, and LICDC (independent) — with rising education, supervised-experience, and scope requirements at each step. Treatment agencies must staff programs against these tiers, and state certification of a treatment program depends on properly credentialed staff.

The opioid crisis expanded Ohio’s treatment sector rapidly, and with that growth came real credential-verification stakes: funding sources, drug courts, and referring agencies all have reasons to confirm that the counselors delivering treatment hold active credentials at the right tier.

Chemical Dependency Professionals Board by the numbers

These figures are ours, not the board's — we computed them from the full State of Ohio licence file so you can see this board in context rather than one record at a time. Data as of September 2026.

Only 21.6% of the 68,908 licences this board has on record are currently active — the other 78.4% belong to people who retired, moved, changed careers, or simply let a credential lapse. That gap is the single best reason to verify a licence rather than assume a name in a database means somebody may practise today.

Most common licence types

When a licence from this board is not active, the most common reason recorded is expired (31,154 records), followed by advanced (17,509). Our status dictionary explains what each label actually means.

1.82% of this board's licences carry a recorded board action (1,253 of 68,908), against about 1.6% across all Ohio professions. A board action covers everything from an administrative consent agreement to revocation, and it is cumulative over a licence's whole life — see how we measured that before reading much into it.

Computed by OhioLicenseCheck from the State of Ohio eLicense dataset (issued licences only; application records excluded). Refreshed daily.

Who verifies these licenses?

• •Treatment centers and recovery programs credentialing counselors
• •Drug courts and probation departments confirming provider qualifications
• •Managed-care plans auditing behavioral-health networks
• •Families evaluating a treatment program’s staff

Verification tips

• Match the tier to the role — group counseling, assessment, and independent practice map to different credential levels.
• A CDCA is an entry credential requiring supervision; it does not authorize independent practice.
• Prevention specialists carry their own credential distinct from counseling tiers.

Renewals and expiration

Credentials renew on regular cycles with continuing-education requirements including ethics content. High staff turnover in the treatment sector makes centralized expiry tracking especially valuable for agency compliance officers.

Frequently asked questions