The U.S. Supreme Court case Tommy G. Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al. v. Western States Medical Center et al., 2001 revolved around the issue of whether restrictions imposed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on advertising compounded drugs violated First Amendment rights to free speech. The FDA Modernization Act allowed pharmacists to sell compounded drugs without needing FDA approval for each product but prohibited them from advertising or promoting these products directly to patients or doctors. Several pharmacies challenged this restriction as unconstitutional under the First Amendment's protection of commercial speech. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Western States Medical Center, stating that while government has legitimate interest in ensuring drug safety and efficacy through regulation, it failed to demonstrate how restricting promotional activities would directly advance this interest without infringing upon constitutional rights more than necessary.

The dissenting opinion in the case of Tommy G. Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al. v. Western States Medical Center et al., 2001 was written by Justice Breyer who disagreed with the majority's view that restrictions on advertising compounded drugs were a violation of First Amendment rights to free speech. He argued that these restrictions served an important public health interest as they prevented pharmacists from circumventing FDA approval processes for new drugs by simply combining existing ones and marketing them as 'new'. According to him, this could potentially expose patients to untested drug combinations with unknown side effects or efficacy levels. Furthermore, he believed that less restrictive alternatives proposed by the majority would not be effective enough in achieving this objective due to practical enforcement difficulties.