Cite as: 514 U. S. 476 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
terest served by § 205(e)(2). In Posadas de Puerto Rico Associates v. Tourism Co. of P. R., 478 U. S. 328, 341 (1986), we found that the Puerto Rico Legislature's interest in promoting the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens by reducing their demand for gambling provided a sufficiently "substantial" governmental interest to justify the regulation of gambling advertising. So too the Government here has a significant interest in protecting the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens by preventing brewers from competing on the basis of alcohol strength, which could lead to greater alcoholism and its attendant social costs. Both panels of the Court of Appeals that heard this case concluded that the goal of suppressing strength wars constituted a substantial interest, and we cannot say that their conclusion is erroneous. We have no reason to think that strength wars, if they were to occur, would not produce the type of social harm that the Government hopes to prevent.
The Government attempts to bolster its position by arguing that the labeling ban not only curbs strength wars, but also "facilitates" state efforts to regulate alcohol under the Twenty-first Amendment. The Solicitor General directs us to United States v. Edge Broadcasting Co., 509 U. S. 418 (1993), in which we upheld a federal law that prohibited lottery advertising by radio stations located in States that did not operate lotteries. That case involved a station located in North Carolina (a nonlottery State) that broadcast lottery advertisements primarily into Virginia (a State with a lottery). We upheld the statute against First Amendment challenge in part because it supported North Carolina's anti-gambling policy without unduly interfering with States that sponsored lotteries. Id., at 431-435. In this case, the Government claims that the interest behind § 205(e)(2) mirrors that of the statute in Edge Broadcasting because it prohibits disclosure of alcohol content only in States that do not affirmatively require brewers to provide that information. In the Government's view, this saves States that might wish to
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