434
Opinion of the Court
North Carolina residents ignorant of the Virginia Lottery for ignorance's sake," but to accommodate nonlottery States' interest in discouraging public participation in lotteries, even as they accommodate the countervailing interests of lottery States. Reply Brief for Petitioners 11. Within the bounds of the general protection provided by the Constitution to commercial speech, we allow room for legislative judgments. Fox, 492 U. S., at 480. Here, as in Posadas de Puerto Rico, the Government obviously legislated on the premise that the advertising of gambling serves to increase the demand for the advertised product. See Posadas, 478 U. S., at 344. See also Central Hudson, supra, at 569. Congress clearly was entitled to determine that broadcast of promotional advertising of lotteries undermines North Carolina's policy against gambling, even if the North Carolina audience is not wholly unaware of the lottery's existence. Congress has, for example, altogether banned the broadcast advertising of cigarettes, even though it could hardly have believed that this regulation would keep the public wholly ignorant of the availability of cigarettes. See 15 U. S. C. § 1335. See also Queensgate Investment Co. v. Liquor Control Comm'n, 69 Ohio St. 2d 361, 366, 433 N. E. 138, 142 (alcohol advertising), app. dism'd for want of a substantial federal question, 459 U. S. 807 (1982). Nor do we require that the Government make progress on every front before it can make progress on any front. If there is an immediate connection between advertising and demand, and the federal regulation decreases advertising, it stands to reason that the policy of decreasing demand for gambling is correspondingly advanced. Accordingly, the Government may be said to advance its purpose by substantially reducing lottery advertising, even where it is not wholly eradicated.
Thus, even if it were proper to conduct a Central Hudson analysis of the statutes only as applied to Edge, we would not agree with the courts below that the restriction at issue
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