Calling addiction an illness mitigates all personal responsibility. Calling it strictly poor judgment mitigates science. My mother was a depressive alcoholic who self-medicated. She had clinical issues but also made unfortunate and life-destroying decisions about how to deal with them. It wasn’t black-and-white. Not much in life ever is.
In this case, I think it was a person with an addiction problem made the mistake of getting in a car while heavily impared, and the light sentencing reflected that.
