May I ask how the idea of „wrong practice“ developed? This line of thinking reminds me of the reasoning behind dry insight.
Overall, concentration techniques, commentarial or otherwise, don‘t work like an anesthetic. Craving does come up, and most instructions I‘ve seen tell you not to ignore or paste over but investigate it. This way, ideally, the mind gets stilled to a degree where suffering is not as acute, and may be observed from a more detached viewpoint.
To run with your smoking analogy, many people don‘t quit cold turkey but either reduce the number of cigarettes they smoke gradually or think of something else to do instead, like chewing gum. They replace a harmful habit with a relatively less harmful one.
Your argument about the progression towards jhana seems sound. I can‘t speak from personal experience here, as I have not attained jhana. Maybe I‘m also misrepresenting Thanissaro Bhikkhu‘s point here, so let me make my own.
Rather than calling my interpretation putting the cart before the horse, I’d say that yours is linear or consecutive, while mine is nonlinear or iterative. While you say that a total understanding of the problem and your proposed solution must come first, steadfast endurance second, and release third, I suspect that this may not only be very hard to do, but unrealistic as well. In my experience, few people‘s minds, and I‘m including my own, follow these neat abstractions, but rather work in spiraling and habituated ways, unruly and hard to domesticate if you‘re trying to impose something, surprisingly diligent at times if you work in a way that serves their perceived interests. As a personal anecdote, one of my piano teachers had me practice from a book literally called „Der gerade Weg“ („The Straight Path“), designed to teach techniques according to someone‘s idea of an ideal progression, and the pieces in that book were dreadfully dull. I made much better progress working with a teacher who had me play pieces I liked, some below, others above my level of skill, picking up the techniques as I went along propelled by the joy and passion for music. So while I may plan out an entire path to the end of craving, that doesn‘t mean that it‘s practical for many if it’s all stick to the very end, where a big, juicy carrot might be waiting. Messy minds need to be shepherded from both sides, so to say, building the capacities for calm and inspection in parallel, igniting a passion for the path bit by bit. AN9.41 seems to suggest this two-pronged strategy (emphasis mine):
As you cite a sutta naming right view as a necessary prerequisite for right immersion, let me also quote MN9:
What is your strategy to build contentment and love?