3 ms·

If ads are protected free speech how are tobacco ads illegal?

• x0x0 10y ago
  Speech is regulated all the time. Free speech in practice means we bias towards permitting speech, but many categories of speech are regulated. To wit: you cannot lie in advertisements, you cannot incite imminent violence, you can be successfully sued for slander and/or libel, etc. Read the first two paragraphs of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite... ; it also discusses commercial speech.
  • deno 10y ago
    United States still has obscenity laws, a backdoor around first amendment, which can be interpreted to mean whatever the court wants it to mean in any given situation. It exists, unchallenged, because otherwise child pornography would have to be legal. My question was, wouldn’t this ruling be a basis to challenge the outright Tobacco ad ban? Before the ban there was still regulation, the ads had to be offset with other content, pro-health etc. Just like with political ads on public airwaves now. In Canada, for example, the Tobacco ban was successfully challenged in court as violating Freedom of Speech as recently as 1991. Ultimately the ban remained in place because of another backdoor called “peace, order, and good government.”