Interesting discussion. Trivia - what are the only two Pharmaceutical grade MJ LPs currently listed and openly advertising as such in Canada? Bedrocan is one. (Unless I am missing any others at this point.)
Here is my personal take on the semantics and differences:
Medical Grade - any company who passes HC standards can claim this. It means nothing except a nice little marketing sound bite that all LPs can now claim. The "standards" are supposed to be better than street pot- no mold, consistency, plus or minus a certain THC / CBD level and so on.
Pharma Grade - this is the very striingent gold standard at the top of the heap that a very few companies can claim. ISO Standardized, clinical, 3rd party lab testing verified.
Here is another little bit of trivia that I found enlightening because I was surprised, but very familiar with in my past line of work: Go to Bedrocan's website, click on "Strain Varieties" tab at the top page. Click any one of the strains and then you will see
Representative Certificate of Analysis aka COA. Right below that a greyed out box with
Download Certificate. Click on this and the pdf should download or open in your browser. Example:
https://bedrocan.ca/product/bedropuur/
You will now see a COA - Certificate of Analysis. Without this, no chemical product can be shipped and moved across Canadian, US and International borders. (Remember, BED is the only licensed cannabis company that HC allows to import dried MJ and now live MJ plants into Canada.)
Have a look at the assay monographs and various information listed on this COA. You will see things like date of production, ppm chemical composition and a whole host of other information tested, verified and signed off on by the Dutch Ministry of health.
Now I am sure other current LPs
might have something similar, but I have never seen them. Not to say that they don't, but again - they are not Pharma grade holding to a much higher standard. There is a difference.
Again this is just my subjective opinon.
DD and question everything.