In recent months, it's become clear that vaping is not the healthiest thing you can do for your lungs. Until now, this was really all anyone could say with confidence, but a new government report finally gives regulators a roadmap to prevent e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury (EVALI).

On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its EVALI report with figures from August 2019 through January 2020. In a nutshell, the numbers don't look great for cannabis oil producers like Curaleaf (OTC:CURLF) or tobacco companies like Altria (NYSE:MO) that invested heavily to build new nicotine-based vape businesses.

Quality control issues

The CDC sifted through substance use data from 1,979 reports and found a lot of overlap. About 82% of EVALI cases were reported by patients who used THC-containing products compared to 54% who used nicotine products.

The US government has announced it is banning most flavored e-cigarettes in a bid to curb the rising tide of youth vaping
The US government has announced it is banning most flavored e-cigarettes in a bid to curb the rising tide of youth vaping. Five more cases were reported by the same Indiana high school that saw nine students hospitalized earlier this month due to vaping-related illnesses. AFPTV / Agnes BUN

Among patients who reported their THC sources, 78% reported buying from informal sources while 16% procured their cartridges from commercial sources.

Not a good track record

Curaleaf and the rest of America's burgeoning cannabis industry still have some quality control problems to work out, but the cannabis industry's doing much better than Altria and peers. Among EVALI patients that reported nicotine-vaping sources, 69% reported getting all their products from commercial sources, while just 17% bought from informal sources.

There's a lot of overlap in the data and some gaps that mean any conclusions drawn from the CDC's report should be taken with a grain of salt. That said, it looks like stricter federal regulation of nicotine vaping companies like Altria is probably on the horizon. Meanwhile, different states are headed in different directions based on their interpretations of the report's cannabis-related findings.

Cory Renauer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

This article originally appeared in The Motley Fool.

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