Dr. Gregory Sonn’s business cards and website are emblazoned with marijuana plants.

The logo of his Iona Cannabis Clinic in south Fort Myers is a pot leaf-shaped caduceus.

And he likes to say that "cannabis is medicine."

So, it’s probably not too much of a surprise that Sonn is the single biggest provider of patient certifications to obtain the drug in the state of Florida, according to recently released state data.

Sonn, a family practice physician, made 4,203 certifications between Oct. 1 and March 31 – more than a third of all such authorizations in Lee County during that period, according to the Florida boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine.

That’s about 2.5% of all statewide certifications, more than the combined number in some smaller counties and nearly twice as many as the state's second-highest medical marijuana certifier, a doctor in Sarasota County.

Sonn said he's not even surprised, given that he specializes in treating certain ailments with cannabis and is well-versed in state regulations surrounding that.

"I worked my tail off to get there. I'm constantly trying to reach new people," Sonn said. "I'm all about cannabis as medicine, as a natural replacement for pharmaceutical drugs."

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The state report highlighted the fact that a relatively small number of physicians are certifying a disproportionate share of patients. Overall, 56% of certifications were issued by 89 doctors, which represents about 7% of doctors authorized to OK medical marijuana use in Florida.

One physician charged with reviewing certification patterns likened the situation to the state's troubles with opioid "pill mills," according to The News Service of Florida.

Sonn called that comparison "absurd."

"We're trying to get people off of opiates, get out of the big pharm mentality and use these natural medicines that are non-addictive, do not cause overdose deaths, and, in fact, decrease the use of opiates nearly in every case," he said.

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Lee County had 36 certifying doctors during the period the report examined. Sonn and four others accounted for about 80% of the marijuana certifications.

Collier County had 29 medical marijuana doctors who made 3,174 certifications. One Naples doctor affiliated with a CannaMD clinic in Naples, Mark Vacker, accounted for 1,048 of them.

"That an increasing number of patients are finding relief from medical marijuana — and that said patients tend to gravitate towards trusted, well-known professionals within the field — should not be surprising," Vacker wrote in an email to The News-Press. "Especially in such a new field, patients want to seek treatment from a name they can trust. I'm proud to count myself among that list."

The most common conditions for which Lee County doctors certified patients were post-traumatic stress disorder (5,271 certifications), unspecified medical conditions comparable to the “debilitating” illnesses specifically outlined by the law broadly legalizing medical marijuana (2,671 certifications) and chronic non-malignant pain (2,426 certifications).

In Collier County, the top conditions were PTSD (1,375 certifications), chronic non-malignant pain (1,119 certifications) and cancer (318 certifications).

Follow this reporter on Twitter: @FrankGluck

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