Accredited addiction counseling programs: the future is upon us.(Editorial)

The profession of addiction counseling stands on the brink of an incredible opportunity with the writing of the third draft of the 2009 Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) Standards. As you may have heard by now, this is the first time that a specialty area in addiction counseling has been offered by CACREP. As the addiction counseling profession moves toward a new standard of requiring practitioners to possess a master's degree, the creation of these specialty standards could not have come at a better time. Additionally, the importance for all counselors to recognize the impact of addictions in every area of their work (be it schools, marriage and family, career, college counseling, etc.) has been established by placing addiction-related content into the core curriculum for every counselor education student.

But we need your help to keep these specialty standards on CACREP's radar. Without a significant outpour of support from interested parties, there is a chance that these standards may vanish before they are published.

Here's what you can do (and it doesn't take much time). Simply go to the CACREP Web site (http://www.cacrep.org/StandardsRevisionText.html) and open "Draft #3" in either Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat. You're welcome to review the entire document given that there are some exciting changes proposed. For the purposes of the mission of the International Association of Addictions and Offender Counselors (IAAOC) to increase the professionalism of addiction counseling, I would suggest you pay particular attention to two areas.

First, review Standard II.F.3.g. in which the need for studies that provide an understanding of the "theories and etiology of addictions and addictive behaviors including strategies for prevention, intervention and treatment" (p. 10) is outlined. This is the core curriculum standard that requires all counselor education students to understand concepts related to addiction counseling.

Second, the addiction counseling specialty standards can be found on pages 17-21. Please review these and see what you think. A lot of work has gone into drafting these standards ...