366
Opinion of the Court
ical Center v. Shalala, 238 F. 3d 1090 (2001). The Court of Appeals agreed that the FDAMA's advertisement and solicitation restrictions fail Central Hudson's test for permissible regulation of commercial speech, finding that the Government had not demonstrated that the speech restrictions would directly advance its interests or that alternatives less restrictive of speech were unavailable. The Court of Appeals disagreed, however, that the speech-related restrictions were severable from the rest of § 127(a), 21 U. S. C. § 353a, explaining that the FDAMA's legislative history demonstrated that Congress intended to exempt compounding from the FDCA's requirements only in return for a prohibition on promotion of specific compounded drugs. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals invalidated § 127(a) in its entirety.
We granted certiorari, 534 U. S. 992 (2001), to consider whether the FDAMA's prohibitions on soliciting prescriptions for, and advertising, compounded drugs violate the First Amendment. Because neither party petitioned for certiorari on the severability issue, we have no occasion to review that portion of the Court of Appeals' decision. Likewise, the provisions of the FDAMA outside § 127(a), which are unrelated to drug compounding, are not an issue here and so remain unaffected.
II
The parties agree that the advertising and soliciting prohibited by the FDAMA constitute commercial speech. In Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U. S. 748 (1976), the first case in which we explicitly held that commercial speech receives First Amendment protection, we explained the reasons for this protection: "It is a matter of public interest that [economic] decisions, in the aggregate, be intelligent and well-informed. To this end, the free flow of commercial information is indispensable." Id., at 765. Indeed, we recognized that a "particular consumer's interest in the free flow of commercial information . . . may be as keen, if not keener by far, than
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