Can You Text About CBD, Cannabis, Lending or Gambling? Restricted Industries in 10DLC

For most businesses, 10DLC compliance is a process problem: register correctly, collect consent, send honestly. For some industries, it is a wall: carriers ban or heavily restrict entire categories regardless of how clean the opt-in is. If you operate in one of these verticals, or serve clients who do, know the map before investing in SMS.

Prohibited outright

• Cannabis, CBD, kratom. Banned on 10DLC (and short codes) regardless of state legality, because carrier policy follows federal law. This covers promotion and sale, such as dispensary deals and CBD product marketing. See the SHAFT breakdown for the reasoning.
• High-risk / predatory lending. Payday loans, title loans, and similar short-term high-APR products are named prohibited categories with most US carriers, including third-party lead generation for them.
• Debt relief / debt forgiveness marketing, credit repair of the too-good-to-be-true variety, and "get rich quick" / work-from-home schemes.
• Illegal substances and activities, obviously, plus content evading these rules through euphemism; filters treat evasion itself as a violation signal.

Restricted / conditionally allowed

• Gambling and casino traffic: heavily restricted; where allowed (e.g. licensed operators in legal states), expect age-gating, geographic limitation, and provider-specific approval. Sweepstakes with proper legal structure can run but face elevated review.
• Alcohol, firearms, tobacco/vape: the age-gated SHAFT categories, permitted with real age verification and declared flags.
• Cryptocurrency: exchanges and trading promotion sit in high-risk territory with many providers; account-security OTPs from established platforms are generally fine, moonshot coin promos are not.
• Third-party debt collection: allowed with strict content rules (FDCPA applies on top of carrier policy).

The gray zone: adjacent businesses

The bans catch businesses near restricted categories too:

• Marketing agencies serving dispensary clients cannot route that traffic through their own registered campaigns. That is snowshoeing plus prohibited content.
• Wellness brands whose product lines include CBD items: the SMS program must cleanly exclude those products.
• Financial-adjacent apps (budgeting tools, credit monitoring) are fine; the line is promoting the restricted products themselves.

What restricted businesses can do

1. Separate the permissible traffic. A dispensary cannot send promos, but its adjacent legitimate operations (a separate merch brand, an educational newsletter without product sale) may support compliant programs, given real separation rather than relabeling.
2. Use owned channels for the restricted content: email (with its own rules), app push notifications, and wallet passes carry no carrier content ban.
3. Beware "cannabis-friendly SMS" vendors. Services promising 10DLC delivery for banned verticals are routing traffic in ways that get numbers burned and businesses blocklisted. The outcomes are predictable and the money is wasted.
4. If you believe you were misclassified, escalate with evidence through your provider; a non-resubmittable rejection for a business that is actually outside the restricted category is appealable through support channels.

The uncomfortable summary: carrier messaging is a privilege administered by private networks with a conservative risk posture. For most restricted verticals the answer is not a cleverer registration but a different channel.

Frequently asked questions

Can a dispensary send appointment or order-ready notifications?

Carrier policy prohibits cannabis-related traffic broadly, not just marketing; order notifications about cannabis products are still cannabis commerce. Some operators use email or app push for this. Attempting it over 10DLC risks number blocking.

Is lead generation for restricted industries also banned?

Yes. The prohibitions cover third-party marketing and lead gen for the restricted categories, not just direct sellers. "We only collect interest, the lender sends nothing by SMS" does not clear the sender doing the collecting.

Who decides these restrictions, TCR or carriers?

Carriers set the content policies (published in their codes of conduct and reflected in CTIA guidelines); TCR and DCAs implement them at registration, and carrier filters enforce them in transit. Providers like Twilio layer their own acceptable-use policies on top, sometimes stricter.