Cite as: 529 U. S. 120 (2000)
Breyer, J., dissenting
question at issue and precluded the FDA from regulating tobacco products.
* * *
By no means do we question the seriousness of the problem that the FDA has sought to address. The agency has amply demonstrated that tobacco use, particularly among children and adolescents, poses perhaps the single most significant threat to public health in the United States. Nonetheless, no matter how "important, conspicuous, and controversial" the issue, and regardless of how likely the public is to hold the Executive Branch politically accountable, post, at 190, an administrative agency's power to regulate in the public interest must always be grounded in a valid grant of authority from Congress. And " '[i]n our anxiety to effectuate the congressional purpose of protecting the public, we must take care not to extend the scope of the statute beyond the point where Congress indicated it would stop.' " United States v. Article of Drug . . . Bacto-Unidisk, 394 U. S. 784, 800 (1969) (quoting 62 Cases of Jam v. United States, 340 U. S. 593, 600 (1951)). Reading the FDCA as a whole, as well as in conjunction with Congress' subsequent tobacco-specific legislation, it is plain that Congress has not given the FDA the authority that it seeks to exercise here. For these reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, and Justice Ginsburg join, dissenting.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has the authority to regulate "articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body . . . ." Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), 21 U. S. C. § 321(g)(1)(C). Unlike the majority, I believe that tobacco products fit within this statutory language.
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