Cite as: 535 U. S. 357 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
pharmacist to another. We found these fears insufficient to justify a ban on such advertising. 425 U. S., at 769. We explained:
"There is, of course, an alternative to this highly paternalistic approach. That alternative is to assume that this information is not in itself harmful, that people will perceive their own best interests if only they are well enough informed, and that the best means to that end is to open the channels of communication rather than to close them. . . . But the choice among these alternative approaches is not ours to make or the Virginia General Assembly's. It is precisely this kind of choice, between the dangers of suppressing information, and the dangers of its misuse if it is freely available, that the First Amendment makes for us. Virginia is free to require whatever professional standards it wishes of its pharmacists; it may subsidize them or protect them from competition in other ways. . . . But it may not do so by keeping the public in ignorance of the entirely lawful terms that competing pharmacists are offering." Id., at 770 (citation omitted).
See also 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island, 517 U. S., at 503 ("[B]ans against truthful, nonmisleading commercial speech . . . usually rest solely on the offensive assumption that the public will respond 'irrationally' to the truth. . . . The First Amendment directs us to be especially skeptical of regulations that seek to keep people in the dark for what the government perceives to be their own good" (citation omitted)).
Even if the Government had asserted an interest in preventing people who do not need compounded drugs from obtaining those drugs, the statute does not directly advance that interest. The dissent claims that the Government "must exclude from the area of permitted drug sales . . . those compounded drugs sought by patients who may not
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