No tobacco, vape, or nicotine product content

The requirementstatement

Campaign content must not promote tobacco, vaping, or nicotine products.

Severityseverity: BlockingBLOCKINGBreaking this rule gets the submission rejected. There is no partial credit.
When it bitesphase: Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
What is checkedobject: campaign.description + campaign.sample[] + campaign.message_flow
Where it liveslayer: Message contentMESSAGE_CONTENT
How Ekas settles itdetectability: AI · formAI_FORM; A semantic question about what you wrote: whether a description matches a use case, whether a name looks like a filed entity. Judged by a model against written criteria.
What the fix involvesfailureClass: Hard stopHARD_STOP; Not remediable. Resubmitting will not help, and anyone offering to fix it is selling you a rejection.
Who requires itauthorities: TwilioTCRT-MobileAT&TCTIA
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

The T in SHAFT, and the letter that splits in two. Twilio permits tobacco on short code behind an age gate and never on long code or toll-free — which is to say never on 10DLC — while vape, e-cigarettes and e-liquid are refused on every channel including the one that carries tobacco. Retailers who sell both read the tobacco allowance and assume it covers the vape wall, and that assumption is what the rejection is usually about.

How to fix itremediation

Take the product out of the 10DLC campaign. The age gate that rescues alcohol reaches tobacco only on short code, which is a different registration on a different number type — and it does not reach vape, e-cigarettes, e-liquid or pods on any channel at all, so separating the vape lines out is the first thing to check. Cessation and nicotine-replacement programmes are a distinct category and stay registrable when the copy is about quitting rather than about the product.

Common mistakespitfalls

Splitting the vape products into a second campaign does not help — the vape ban is by channel, not by campaign, so the second campaign is refused on the same code.

Provider rejection codescodes

The code you get back when this rule is what failed, and whether that provider lets you resubmit.

Provider	Code	Resubmit
Twiliogen2	30958	No
Twilio	30458	No
Bandwidth	707	Yes
Telnyx	707	Yes

Notesnotes

Bandwidth ("Alcohol and Tobacco can be supported with robust age-gating and proper opt-in" on 10DLC), Telnyx 707 and Bird 707 all accept tobacco behind a date-of-birth gate, so this is a genuine divergence rather than a strictness difference. Strictest reading kept; the vape half is uniform across every source.

Rules you will hit next

6 other rules read campaign.description + campaign.sample[] + campaign.message_flow. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.

MSG-137No unsolicited bulk messagingBlockingBLOCKING MSG-161SHAFT screening covers every campaign field, not a sample of themBlockingBLOCKING MSG-164No underage, non-consensual or illegal sexual themesBlockingBLOCKING MSG-170No content promoting, glorifying or inciting violenceBlockingBLOCKING MSG-182No explosives, fireworks or pyrotechnics contentBlockingBLOCKING MSG-183No weapons that are not legal in all fifty statesBlockingBLOCKING

All message content rules

MSG-SHAFT-TOBACCO is one of 122 message content rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.