Cite as: 535 U. S. 357 (2002)
Breyer, J., dissenting
if FDA is to "pursu[e] difficult (and often competing) objectives"). See also Illinois Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U. S. 173, 188-189 (1979) (Blackmun, J., concurring) (warning against overly demanding search for less restrictive alternatives).
In my view, the Constitution demands a more lenient application, an application that reflects the need for distinctions among contexts, forms of regulation, and forms of speech, and which, in particular, clearly distinguishes between "commercial speech" and other forms of speech demanding stricter constitutional protection. Otherwise, an overly rigid "commercial speech" doctrine will transform what ought to be a legislative or regulatory decision about the best way to protect the health and safety of the American public into a constitutional decision prohibiting the legislature from enacting necessary protections. As history in respect to the Due Process Clause shows, any such transformation would involve a tragic constitutional misunderstanding. See id., at 189 (Blackmun, J., concurring).
IV
Finally, the majority would hold the statute unconstitutional because it prohibits pharmacists from advertising compounded drugs to doctors. Ante, at 376-377. Doctors, however, obtain information about individual drugs through many other channels. And there is no indication that restrictions on commercial advertising have had any negative effect on the flow of this information. See e. g., Contemporary Pharmacy Practice 11.4 (compounded drug information "available" and "widely disseminated" through books, journals, monographs, and vendors). Nor, with one exception, have doctors or groups of doctors complained that the statute will interfere with that flow of information in the future. But see Brief for Julian M. Whitaker, M.D., et al. as Amici Curiae 1 (alleging, without evidentiary support, that the regulations prevent doctors from knowing how to
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