Cite as: 505 U. S. 504 (1992)
Opinion of Scalia, J.
as the jury were instructed not to zero in on deficiencies in the manufacturers' advertising or promotion.
I think that is inconsistent with the law of pre-emption. Advertising and promotion are the normal means by which a manufacturer communicates required product warnings to prospective customers, and by far the most economical means. It is implausible that Congress meant to save cigarette companies from being compelled to convey such data to consumers through that means, only to allow them to be compelled to do so through means more onerous still. As a practical matter, such a "tell-the-consumers-any-way-you-wish" law compels manufacturers to relinquish the advertising and promotion immunity accorded them by the Act. The test for pre-emption in this setting should be one of practical compulsion, i. e., whether the law practically compels the manufacturers to engage in behavior that Congress has barred the States from prescribing directly. Cf., e. g., Ray v. Atlantic Richfield Co., 435 U. S. 151, 173, n. 25 (1978). Though the hypothetical law requiring disclosure to a state regulatory agency would seem to survive this test, I would have no difficulty finding that test met with respect to state laws that require the cigarette companies to meet general standards of "fair warning" regarding smoking and health.
* * *
Like Justice Blackmun, "I can only speculate as to the difficulty lower courts will encounter in attempting to implement [today's] decision." Ante, at 543-544 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). Must express pre-emption provisions really be given their narrowest reasonable construction (as the Court says in Part III), or need they not (as the plurality does in Part V)? Are courts to ignore all doctrines of implied pre-emption whenever the statute at issue contains an express pre-emption provision, as the Court says today, or are they to continue to apply them, as we have in the past? For pre-emption purposes,
555
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