These peddlers have more moxie than the guys being paid to get you inside a Tijuana strip-club. They hang out on the Venice boardwalk and call out that the doctor's in if you need a medical marijuana prescription from your friendly, nearby cannabis quack.

While this is a perfect allegory for the state of medical weed in L.A. — anyone with fake back pain can get it — some folks in our hippie beach-side enclave aren't happy with the unseemly “hawking.”

And so, cops are cracking down.

Venice 311 reports that the LAPD is putting undercover officers on the job in order to force these guys to stop luring you to the world of herbal remedies (as if you needed the incentive anyway).

We talked to LAPD Lt. Paula Kreeft, who says there is no special enforcement effort — that cops have an ongoing, hate-hate relationship with these particular doc promoters.

“We have done that in the past and when it gets out of hand we have that (cracking down) as an option,” she says. “It's illegal. It's called hawking — to have people out there telling anyone the doctor's in.”

“All the clinics have been made aware of it.”

Does that mean the guy with the sandwich shop arrow sign is next?

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