Cannabis, CBD and related brands are not carried, whatever the traffic
The requirementstatement
A brand whose business is cannabis, CBD, hemp derivatives, kratom or drug paraphernalia must not be registered for A2P messaging.
- 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
- brand.vertical + brand fields + website content
- Where it liveslayer
- BrandBRAND
- How Ekas settles itdetectability
- AI · formAI_FORMAI · crawlCRAWLExternal recordEXTERNAL_DATA
- 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. Needs your live site or policy page fetched and read. Ekas crawls it the way a reviewer would. The fact that settles it lives in a register we cannot query, such as the IRS file, a postal database, or another provider’s tenant. Reported as a warning with the evidence to check, not as a pass.
- 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
- AWSBandwidthBirdSinchInfobipPlivo
- When it appliesapplicabilityText
- Applies to every 10DLC registration.
Why this rule existsrationale
How to fix itremediation
A cannabis-sector brand cannot be registered for A2P messaging in the US, including for two-factor or transactional traffic. Use email, an app, or a web channel for customer messaging.
Provider rejection codescodes
The code you get back when this rule is what failed, and whether that provider lets you resubmit.
| Provider | Code | Resubmit |
|---|---|---|
| Bandwidth | 701 | No |
| Sinch | CR2015 | No |
Check this yourselfattestation
Ekas flags this from what you submit, but the fact that settles it sits somewhere only you can reach.
Does this business sell, distribute, or serve the cannabis, CBD, hemp, kratom or paraphernalia sector in any part of its trade?
- 1Ask what the business actually sells, not what these messages say. The prohibition attaches to the business and holds regardless of state licensing.
- 2Include logistics, payments and services to the sector — they are caught by the same rule.
- 3Where the answer is ambiguous, settle it before submitting rather than after.
What wrong looks like: A licensed dispensary sending nothing but appointment reminders or two-factor codes is still ineligible. The traffic is harmless and the business is the disqualifier.
Notesnotes
Rules you will hit next
6 other rules read brand.vertical + brand fields + website content. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.
BRD-278 is one of 196 brand rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.