A rather good friend of mine is the executive procurement manager of a medical dispensary in the States. He said the name of a strain might be a hint, but nothing they can rely on for classification. I did some googling myself because the topic always gets my goat - I disdain chaos; anyway, I found written in
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/332320v1.full that "
although the sampling here includes merely a fragment of the available Cannabis strains, our results give scientific merit to claims that strains can be unpredictable."
I parsed only a fraction of the whole paper from 2018, and I comprehended little other than statements in the conclusion, but what I found quite intriguing was that, "
... there is no consistent genetic differentiation between the widely held perceptions of Sativa and Indica Cannabis types. Moreover, the genetic analyses do not support the reported proportions of Sativa and Indica within each strain, which is expected given the lack of genetic distinction between Sativa and Indica".
My friend added during our long discussion on the topic, that based on his observation of the experiences of others, even two strains with similar THC and CBD counts might produce noticeably different experiences; but none that are known to be classified by ratios of cannabinoid or other constituents.
At least I feel more comfortable knowing that some of the cannabis classification "bullshit" has been scientifically identified ;-)
Cheers,
... Eric