Cite as: 533 U. S. 525 (2001)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
II
On the First Amendment issues raised by petitioners, my disagreements with the majority are less significant. I would, however, reach different dispositions as to the 1,000-foot rule and the height restrictions for indoor advertising, and my evaluation of the sales practice restrictions differs from the Court's.
The 1,000-Foot Rule
I am in complete accord with the Court's analysis of the importance of the interests served by the advertising restrictions. As the Court lucidly explains, few interests are more "compelling," ante, at 564, than ensuring that minors do not become addicted to a dangerous drug before they are able to make a mature and informed decision as to the health risks associated with that substance. Unlike other products sold for human consumption, tobacco products are addictive and ultimately lethal for many long-term users. When that interest is combined with the State's concomitant concern for the effective enforcement of its laws regarding the sale of tobacco to minors, it becomes clear that Massachusetts' regulations serve interests of the highest order and are, therefore, immune from any ends-based challenge, whatever level of scrutiny one chooses to employ.
Nevertheless, noble ends do not save a speech-restricting statute whose means are poorly tailored. Such statutes
the Federal Government lacks the constitutional authority to impose a similarly motivated ban. See United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549 (1995). Despite the absence of any identified federal interest in creating "an invisible federal zone extending 1,000 feet beyond the (often irregular) boundaries of the school property," as the majority construes it today, the "statute now before us forecloses the States from experimenting and exercising their own judgment in an area to which States lay claim by right of history and expertise," id., at 583 (Kennedy, J., concurring). I wonder why a Court sensitive to federalism concerns would adopt such a strange construction of statutory language whose quite different purpose Congress took pains to explain.
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