Yeh you do. Remember, the author, Webb, is Scots-Irish himself. He's just saying there are pluses and minuses to the culture, just as with many others. I suspect he feels the pluses far outweigh the minuses.
The author of this piece was NOT Webb, it was Charles Oliver. Oliver wrote this article to critique Webb's book, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. Oliver made the comment about meth, not Webb.