376
Opinion of the Court
clearly need them." Post, at 379. Yet the statute does not directly forbid such sales. It instead restricts advertising, of course not just to those who do not need compounded drugs, but also to individuals who do need compounded drugs and their doctors. Although the advertising ban may reduce the demand for compounded drugs from those who do not need the drugs, it does nothing to prevent such individuals from obtaining compounded drugs other than requiring prescriptions. But if it is appropriate for the statute to rely on doctors to refrain from prescribing compounded drugs to patients who do not need them, it is not clear why it would not also be appropriate to rely on doctors to refrain from prescribing compounded drugs to patients who do not need them in a world where advertising was permitted.
The dissent may also be suggesting that the Government has an interest in banning the advertising of compounded drugs because patients who see such advertisements will be confused about the drugs' risks. See post, at 387 ("[The Government] fears the systematic effect . . . of advertisements that will not fully explain the complicated risks at issue"). This argument is precluded, however, by the fact that the Government does not argue that the advertisements are misleading. Even if the Government did argue that it had an interest in preventing misleading advertisements, this interest could be satisfied by the far less restrictive alternative of requiring each compounded drug to be labeled with a warning that the drug had not undergone FDA testing and that its risks were unknown.
If the Government's failure to justify its decision to regulate speech were not enough to convince us that the FDAMA's advertising provisions were unconstitutional, the amount of beneficial speech prohibited by the FDAMA would be. Forbidding the advertisement of compounded drugs would affect pharmacists other than those interested in producing drugs on a large scale. It would prevent pharmacists
Page: Index Previous 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007