Leverson

The defendant was convicted of violating Business & Professions Code, section 600. He appeals from the judgment.

That section provides: “It is unlawful for any person, firm, corporation or association, except boards of health or agencies approved by the State Department of Public Health, to post or otherwise exhibit or distribute in any manner whatsoever in any place, any advertising or other printed, matter concerning venereal diseases, lost manhood, lost vitality, impotency, seminal emissions, self-abuse, varicocele, or excessive sexual indulgence, and calling attention to any medicine, device, “compound, treatment or preparation that may be used therefor.”

Appellant attacks the section on the ground that it violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution in that prohibiting the distribution of printed advertisements infringes on the freedom of the press. The dissemination of printed matter clearly falls within the safeguard of the First Amendment. (In the Matter of Orlando Jackson, 96 U.S. 727 [ 24 L.Ed. 877 ]; Smith v. California (1960), 361 U.S. 147 [ 80 S.Ct. 215 , 4 L.Ed.2d 205 ].) The Fourteenth Amendment makes the First Amendment applicable to state…