Whether or not Kerouac was responsible for bringing Buddhism to the West, the hole in his version of Buddhism certainly resembles that in the usual Western manifestation. The West often perceives Buddhism as endlessly transgressive, "no rules", but Buddhism does in practice usually have rules, and one of the rules that made the list of the five most important rules -- just five -- is "don't get drunk". ("Don't lie" is the really hard one, though!)

Luckily for those of us in the modern day, much more has been translated from the Buddhist literature in the East than was available to the Beat Generation. I can't reasonably criticize someone's knowledge of Buddhism who learned about it in the '50s when I have Google and Wikipedia and Amazon, and there are probably more zen centers now, too.