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• Star Scientific Holds Shareholder Meeting, Discusses Important New Research Findings on Ariva(R), Stonewall(R) Dissolvable Smokeless Tobacco Products 

Star Scientific, Inc. (NASDAQ:STSI) held its annual shareholder's meeting on Friday, December 14 in Washington, DC. Paul L. Perito, the company's Chairman, President and COO, and David Dean, Vice President for Sales and Marketing, each made presentations on the previous year's activities and goals for 2008.

Mr. Perito reviewed a numbers of "firsts" the company had achieved during the past seven years, which included the introduction of a new tobacco product category - low-TSNA dissolvable smokeless tobacco. Ariva® and Stonewall®, and their characteristics, are unique among all tobacco products currently being manufactured: the patented dissolvable products are the only product in their category, and their TSNA levels are the lowest of any tobacco product in the marketplace. TSNAs, or tobacco-specific nitrosamines, are widely recognized as one of the most powerful cancer-causing agents in tobacco leaf and smoke, and importantly, they are the major group of carcinogens in smokeless tobacco.

Mr. Perito summarized the findings from two studies conducted by a group of researchers with the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC) at the University of Minnesota Cancer Center. These studies, which were presented in the December, 2007 Nicotine & Tobacco Research Journal, recruited adult dependent smokers to use either a medicinal nicotine lozenge or a smokeless tobacco product (Ariva® or Exalt) for two weeks, and to then use the other product for two weeks. In the fifth and final week, subjects were free to use either the smokeless product or the lozenge by choice. The studies revealed that "Ariva was preferred over the medicinal nicotine lozenge, which was preferred over Exalt."

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