Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
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Unit: $U36

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Cite as: 529 U. S. 120 (2000)

143

Opinion of the Court

ard, the FDA has concluded that, although tobacco products
might be effective in delivering certain pharmacological ef-
fects, they are “unsafe” and “dangerous” when used for these
purposes. Consequently, if tobacco products were within
the FDA’s jurisdiction, the Act would require the FDA to
remove them from the market entirely. But a ban would
contradict Congress’ clear intent as expressed in its more
recent, tobacco-speciﬁc legislation. The inescapable conclu-
sion is that there is no room for tobacco products within the
FDCA’s regulatory scheme.
If they cannot be used safely
for any therapeutic purpose, and yet they cannot be banned,
they simply do not ﬁt.

B

In determining whether Congress has spoken directly to
the FDA’s authority to regulate tobacco, we must also con-
sider in greater detail the tobacco-speciﬁc legislation that
Congress has enacted over the past 35 years. At the time a
statute is enacted, it may have a range of plausible meanings.
Over time, however, subsequent acts can shape or focus
those meanings. The “classic judicial task of reconciling
many laws enacted over time, and getting them to ‘make
sense’ in combination, necessarily assumes that the implica-
tions of a statute may be altered by the implications of a
later statute.” United States v. Fausto, 484 U. S., at 453.
This is particularly so where the scope of the earlier statute
is broad but the subsequent statutes more speciﬁcally ad-
dress the topic at hand. As we recognized recently in
United States v. Estate of Romani, “a speciﬁc policy embod-
ied in a later federal statute should control our construction
of the [earlier] statute, even though it ha[s] not been ex-
523 U. S., at 530–531.
pressly amended.”
Congress has enacted six separate pieces of legislation
since 1965 addressing the problem of tobacco use and human
health. See supra, at 137–138. Those statutes, among
other things, require that health warnings appear on all
packaging and in all print and outdoor advertisements, see