Agree - this changes the language around someone suffering from this condition from “an alcoholic” to “a person suffering from alcohol use disorder”. The former seems permanent, the latter describes a condition that can be changed.

In my mind, an alcoholic is someone that has a dependency on alcohol, but not all people with AUD have a dependency on alcohol. For example, I think binge-drinking consistently (college students on weekends, for example) can be considered to have a mild AUD, but that person is not necessarily an "alcoholic" -- at least not what the average person considers to be an an alcoholic.

(If anyone knows more, feel free to correct me)

It makes sense to have a distinction between the word disease and condition and a disorder.

A disease particular is from a foreign agent: bactierial/fungal/viral/prionic/parasitic.

a condition or disorder is an integral structure on awry, or rewritten (by chemicals or by viewing data) to go awry: the key distinction between this and disease being that there is no other 'lifeform' (yes - include viruses for simplicity's sake).

so alcohol use disorder vs alcoholism reflects a more accurate state of reality. (there is no bacteria/fungus/prion/parasite/virus that is the CAUSE of alcoholism - a chemical rewrote your brain which has been damaged to potentially require alcohol to survive).

the push back I've encountered had nothing to do with being 'correct'/'sensible' and had everything to do with protecting the feelings of people suffering from AUD - which is not a worthwhile goal to coddle people with fluffy medical terms in the aims of removing responsibility from one's self...

... sorry for the rant :)