We (as a society) consider addicts personally responsible for their actions. For instance, if an alcoholic drives drunk and kills someone, we don't say "oh they're an alcoholic and therefore not responsible for what happened." Whether or not you want to call it a choice is up to you.
But we, as a society, are hypocrites. There are people (anecdotally I think a lot or even a majority), who, when asked, would say that alcohol is not a drug. Simply using the law (alcohol is legal), they will say it cannot be a drug as drugs are illegal or subscribed. This is, of course, non sense.
The other point is that many dui’s and accidents do not happen to alcoholics but rather casual users of alcohol, like students having a drink, no idea what their limits are and getting into a car. That’s different from actual alcoholics who down half a liter of vodka just to get out of bed. I believe they should be treated differently; the latter is ill, the former is a criminal.
Addiction is a disease but society is not kind to the sufferers. It will change though; before the 90s, most mental illness was just ‘don’t whine, walk it off’. Doctors in 80s would send people with anxiety or depression home with a clean bill of health and just ‘work hard, it’ll pass’. If they were women and the doctors men, it would be considered as female hysterics. This all changed quite a bit over the past decades, at least in the west. Addiction will get there and in some countries that is going faster than others.
Any actual Addicts (alcohol or crack or TikTok) operating heavy machinery is a bad idea; functional addicts are just not easy to recognise. An ex colleague of mine is a functional alcohol who drinks exactly 2.5 liters of vodka per day ; he doesn’t drive, he is smart, he functions fully. Not many people know he is an addict. I would say it’s easier to recognise addicts to social media far faster than him because you can see their phone, and when I see them driving while scrolling on their phone, I hope they get a dui and their license taken and then therapy; I am not sure how it’s not as dangerous as driving drunk and yet I see people swerving sitting on their phone daily while swerving without phone is very rare (at least here).
I don’t think you can automatically classify addiction as disease. It can be a disease, but it can also be a compulsion that a “sufferer” chooses to partake in. There is an implicit assumption in your argument that all drug addicts would choose to stop if they weren’t addicted. In my experience, that isn’t true. Many drug users like to use drugs and would not stop using given the choice.
For a more benign example: I “suffer” from dermatophagia. It’s a compulsion that would be very hard for me to stop. But I like doing it. I wouldn’t stop even if I could. This is similar to how addiction is a compulsion, but that doesn’t make the behavior something done unwillingly.
If you are an addict how do you know that the liking is not the addiction? Many ex smokers liked smoking but after really kicking off the habits they cannot stand the smell or thought of it. Same with many ex drinkers; they would tell you they just like drinking and wouldn’t stop, but when they do they dislike the taste even if not full blown alcoholics to begin with. I think you forget that you can only ask them to their choice after waning off the addiction, not while they still have it. Same for your benign pleasure.
But sure, it depends on the case, I didn’t say it didn’t, however I think there is little interpretation for the Philly zombies in this case; given a choice (not addicted and a life that supports that), they would, probably all of them.