Cite as: 507 U. S. 410 (1993)
Blackmun, J., concurring
383 ("[T]he public and private benefits from commercial speech derive from confidence in its accuracy and reliability"). A listener also has little interest in being coerced into a purchasing decision. See Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U. S., at 457 ("[I]n-person solicitation may exert pressure and often demands an immediate response, without providing an opportunity for comparison or reflection"). Furthermore, to the extent it exists at all, a listener has only a weak interest in learning about commercial opportunities that the criminal law forbids. In sum, the commercial speech that this Court had permitted government to regulate or proscribe was commercial speech that did not "serv[e] individual and societal interests in assuring informed and reliable decisionmaking." Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U. S., at 364.
So the law stood in 1980 when this Court decided Central Hudson and held that all commercial speech was entitled only to an intermediate level of constitutional protection. The majority in Central Hudson reviewed the Court's earlier commercial speech cases and concluded that the Constitution "accords a lesser protection to commercial speech than to other constitutionally guaranteed expression." 447 U. S., at 563. As a descriptive matter, this statement was correct, since our cases had recognized that commercial speech could be regulated on grounds that protected noncommercial speech could not. See n. 1, supra. This "lesser protection" did not rest, however, on the fact that commercial speech "is of less constitutional moment than other forms of speech," as the Central Hudson majority asserted. 447 U. S., at 563, n. 5.2 Rather, it reflected the fact that the lis-2 Central Hudson's conclusion that commercial speech is less valuable than noncommercial speech seems to have its roots in an often-quoted passage from Ohralik: "[W]e . . . have afforded commercial speech a limited measure of protection, commensurate with its subordinate position in the scale of First Amendment values, while allowing modes of regulation that might be impermissible in the realm of noncommercial expres-
433
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