Altria, the parent company of old-school cigarette brands like Marlboro, said Thursday that it will stop providing services including logistics, distribution and access to retail shelf space to Juul.

A string of vaping-related deaths- though none connected to Juul- coupled with a growing number of government bans on e-cigarettes after a surge in teen vaping, has clouded what once was a very promising future for Juul and a new smoking category that was supposed to offset the decline in traditional cigarettes.

Altria is watching the value of its investment go up in smoke.

On Thursday, Altria announced a $4 billion write-down on its Juul investment in the fourth quarter mainly due to the growing number of legal cases facing the e-vaping company, that brings Altria's total write-down to nearly $9 billion. It only paid $12.8 billion for the Juul stake back in December 2018.

With that in mind, Altria has now re-worked the terms of the deal - taking a step back to only help Juul with regulatory affairs including the submission of products for FDA approval.

But Altria isn't optimistic about the future - on Thursday's earnings conference call, the CEO said he expected to see a continued slowdown or outright decline in the e-vaping category and said there was always the chance Juul could get pulled off the market by federal law.

Juul's problems helped swing Altria from a fourth-quarter profit to a loss of nearly $2 billion.

Shares of Altria were down in Thursday trade.