Overview

An app was recently submitted to Apple and it was rejected due to Guideline 1.4.3 referring to Safety - Physical Harm. The message received is similar to the one below.

Guideline 1.4.3 - Safety - Physical Harm

We found that your app promotes the use of tobacco, nicotine-related, or vaping products, including but not limited to cigarettes, pipes, hookahs, or e-cigarettes, which is not permitted on the App Store.

Since these products pose a risk of physical harm to App Store users, it is not appropriate to encourage their use or distribute them on the App Store.

While apps may facilitate the sale of cannabis-related products, promoting the use of vapes or vaping-related products is not appropriate.

Solution

Apple might reject an app submission if it doesn't align with their App Store Review Guidelines, specifically section 1 on "Safety", which will be the case if your application promotes in some shape or form the use of products that may pose a risk of physical harm to the end-users. 

In this case, the only solution known to work is to re-think your business model and application features as needed to come up with a different submission, that will ultimately be appropriate per the current Apple Guidelines linked above.

Once the app is updated by changing or removing the inappropriate features, Republish the app by following the steps presented in our Help Center article on Publishing for iOS.

Testing

After the app is resubmitted with the updated business model, Apple should accept the submission without any errors.