Star Scientific Supports Efforts to Bring Tobacco Harm Reduction Debate to Center Stage.

Business Editors/Health & Medical Writers

CHESTER, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 6, 2002

Star Scientific (NASDAQ:STSI) issued the following comments today on the US Smokeless Tobacco Company (UST) request for an advisory opinion from the FTC regarding the ability to identify smokeless tobacco products, in labeling and advertising, as "reduced harm" products as compared to cigarettes:

UST has requested that the FTC issue an advisory opinion that would allow companies to tell adult consumers, on product labeling and advertising, that smokeless tobacco use is a less harmful alternative to cigarette smoking. The role tobacco harm reduction can play in benefiting the public health is a debate whose time has come. Star Scientific supports all efforts that will illuminate the body of scientific evidence that confirms this reality. While there is robust debate within the public health community about the most effective means of reducing tobacco use, there are two conclusions about which there appears to be broad agreement: all tobacco manufacturing efforts should center on products that expose adult tobacco users to fewer toxins; and that the most dangerous form of tobacco use occurs when tobacco is burned and cigarette smoke is inhaled into the lungs.

Star Scientific was founded on the belief that it is possible to lessen the harm associated with tobacco use through new technologies, and that good science should serve as the basis for tobacco manufacturing in the 21st century. Star is the exclusive licensee of the patented, cutting-edge StarCured(TM) tobacco-curing technology that we believe has fundamentally changed the way flue-cured tobacco is processed in the United States. Independent laboratory testing validates that this technology virtually eliminates a group of the most powerful and abundant cancer-causing toxins in tobacco leaf and smoke, known as the tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs). Our success in scaling up the StarCured(TM) process enabled us to move forward with the development of an innovative, smoke-free tobacco product, Ariva(TM) cigaletts(TM). The tobacco in Ariva(TM) is 100% powdered, compressed StarCured(TM) tobacco. Ariva(TM) provides adult smokers an alternative tobacco product that delivers taste satisfaction without exposing them or those around them to toxic cigarette smoke. These cigaletts(TM) also offer an aesthetic advantage: there is no need to spit because they dissolve completely in the mouth.

Our focus during the past several years on the reduction of TSNAs in tobacco stems from the work of distinguished scientists like Dietrich Hoffmann, Ph.D., who have published numerous articles that define the causal relationship between TSNAs and tobacco-related disease. Some of these articles published recently (see, for example, Chemical Research in Toxicology, July 2001) also conclude that TSNAs are the major carcinogen in smokeless tobacco1. It is our belief, therefore, that any Federal Trade Commission review of harm reduction principles needs to focus on the potential for public health benefit that may result from transitioning adult smokers from cigarettes to smoke-free tobacco products with drastically reduced nitrosamine levels. It is for this very reason that Star Scientific has decided to shift its focus from the manufacture of smoked to smoke-free tobacco products like Ariva(TM) and Stonewall(TM) moist and dry snuffs, as well as to the leaf processing and licensing of StarCured(TM) tobacco.

1 "The Less Harmful Cigarette - A Controversial Issue". Chemical Research in Toxicology, Volume 14, No. 7, July 2001, p. 784

About Star Scientific

Star Scientific is a technology-oriented tobacco company with a toxin reduction mission. It is engaged in the development of tobacco products that deliver fewer carcinogenic toxins (principally tobacco specific nitrosamines, or TSNAs), through the utilization of the innovative StarCured(TM) tobacco curing technology, and in sublicensing that technology to others. Star Scientific has a Corporate and Sales Office in Chester, VA, an Executive, Scientific & Regulatory Affairs office in Bethesda, MD, and manufacturing and processing facilities in Petersburg and Chase City, VA .

See Star's website at: http://www.starscientific.com .

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The Company has tried, whenever possible, to identify these forward-looking statements using words such as "anticipates", "believes", "estimates", "expects", "plans", "intends" and similar expressions. These statements reflect the Company's current beliefs and are based upon information currently available to it. Accordingly, such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, such statements. These risks, uncertainties and contingencies include, without limitation, the fact that the Company may not be successful in litigation to enforce its patent rights, that tobacco companies and others potentially infringing its patent may not enter into royalty agreements to sublicense its patents, that the tobacco industry may not adopt low-TSNA tobacco as its predominant tobacco rapidly or at all, or that a non-infringing product competitive with the patents may be developed by a third party. Other risks of the business include the challenges inherent in new product development initiatives, the uncertainties inherent in the progress of scientific research, the Company's ability to raise the capital necessary to grow its business, potential disputes concerning the Company's intellectual property, potential delays in obtaining any necessary government approvals of the Company's proposed reduced risk tobacco products, market acceptance of the Company's proposed new products, competition from companies with greater resources than the Company, the Company's decision not to join the Master Settlement Agreement ("MSA") and its decision to challenge the constitutionality of the MSA, the effect of state statutes adopted under the MSA and any subsequent modification of the MSA, the Company's dependence on key employees and on its strategic relationships with Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation. The impact of potential litigation, if initiated against or by individual states that have adopted the MSA, could be materially adverse to the Company. See additional discussion under "Factors That May Affect Future Results" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2000, and other factors detailed from time to time in the Company's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or advise upon any such forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.