Cite as: 505 U. S. 504 (1992)
Opinion of Blackmun, J.
ments such as statutes and administrative regulations. See Dewey v. R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 121 N. J. 69, 90, 577 A. 2d 1239, 1249 (1990); Garner, Cigarette Dependency and Civil Liability: A Modest Proposal, 53 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1423, 1454 (1980). Moreover, tort law has an entirely separate function—compensating victims—that sets it apart from direct forms of regulation. See Ferebee v. Chevron Chemical Co., 237 U. S. App. D. C. 164, 175, 736 F. 2d 1529, 1540, cert. denied, 469 U. S. 1062 (1984).
Despite its earlier acknowledgment, consistent with the foregoing conception of damages actions, that "there is no general, inherent conflict between federal pre-emption of state warning requirements and the continued vitality of state common-law damages actions," ante, at 518,2 the plurality apparently finds Garmon's statement that "regulation can be as effectively exerted through an award of damages as through some form of preventive relief," 359 U. S., at 247, sufficient authority to warrant extinguishing the common-law actions at issue in this case. See ante, at 521. I am not persuaded. Not only has the Court previously distinguished Garmon,3 but it has declined on several recent occasions to find the regulatory effects of state tort law direct or substantial enough to warrant pre-emption.
In Goodyear Atomic Corp. v. Miller, for example, the Court distinguished, for purposes of pre-emption analysis,
2 Congress, in fact, has expressly allowed common-law damages actions to survive while pre-empting other, more direct forms of state regulation. See, e. g., Comprehensive Smokeless Tobacco Health Education Act of 1986, § 7, 100 Stat. 34, 15 U. S. C. § 4406; Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, 84 Stat. 1590, 29 U. S. C. § 651 et seq., as construed in Gade v. National Solid Wastes Management Assn., ante, p. 88.
3 The Court has explained that Garmon, in which a state common-law damages award was found to be pre-empted by the National Labor Relations Act, involved a special "presumption of federal pre-emption" relating to the primary jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board. See Brown v. Hotel Employees, 468 U. S. 491, 502 (1984); English v. General Electric Co., 496 U. S. 72, 86-87, n. 8 (1990).
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