At what weight should we put "culture" as a role in addiction? My own experience is that American culture is perfectly fine with getting addicted to drugs. I've known a lot of drug addicts, and they would spread it a lot further than themselves if it were legal to do so.
Your quoted text proves nothing and is really irrelevant to the discussion.
The text I posted from the American Society of Addiction Medicine rebuts your "humans are humans" reductionism.
It does no such thing. Till you put some hard numbers on their claims, they are meaningless. Sure, Drug addiction has a genetic factor. I put that genetic factor at 50% or better, meaning 50% of the population has it, and are susceptible to addiction.
Why do I pick 50%? Because that's what the DrugLibrary.org indicated was the addiction rate of China in 1900.
Maybe this is what your "American Society of Addiction Medicine" means when they say "genetic factors account for about half of the likelihood that an individual will develop an addiction."
It is certainly another way of saying half the population will become addicted to drugs if they are exposed to them.
But since you are so fond of what the American Society of Addiction Medicine thinks on a subject, I'm sure you will rejoice to discover this is their position on Marijuana.
PositionsASAM is critical of the current regulatory state of marijuana, holding that there is no such thing as appropriate medical use of the plant cannabis; in 2010, the society published a white paper calling for federal regulations to oversee research and development of cannabis based medicines and issued recommendations for state medical authorities to "...assure that physicians who choose to discuss the medical use of cannabis and cannabis-based products with patients...[a]dhere to the established professional tenets of prr patient care...";[3] in 2012 the society stated that there is no "Medical marijuana" because the plant parts in question fails to meet the standard requirements for approved medicines, that Marijuana has many serious, negative health effects.[4]
Numbers would make the statement even more meaningful - but even without them, all sane readers will agree that the American Society of Addiction Medicine knows more about addiction than you do.
They are considerably less authoritative on the subject of medicines in general:
there is no "Medical marijuana" because the plant parts in question fails to meet the standard requirements for approved medicines,
A substance can have medical value without being "approved" - and the Institute of Medicine has reported that marijuana does.
Marijuana has many serious, negative health effects.
So does chemotherapy - but it's appropriate when the disease being treated is even worse.