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A News Analysis By Terence T. Gorski (5-28-01) Tom Cohen of the Associated Press reported on May 28, 2001 that Canadas drug control policy is slowly but clearly shifting toward decriminalizing marihuana. This Canadian political movement is in opposition to current trends in US drug law and could square up future direction of drug policy in the United States toward a public health addiction policy that focuses upon prevention and treatment and away from a criminal justice drug policy that focuses upon punishment as a deterrent.Canada has historically been more tolerant of marijuana than the United States and arrest statistics show the dissimilitude in the two nations approaches. The Canadian Center on Substance debauch said about 25,000 people were arrested in Canada for simple possession of marijuana in 1999. The U.S. figure for that year under the zero tolerance policy of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was 24 times higher, exceeding 600,000, says the National Organiza tion for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in Washington. The U.S. population is about eight times that of Canadas. Justice Minister Anne McLellan says the issue should be studied, and a new Parliament committee on drug matters go away look at decriminalization. Conservative Party leader Joe Clark is urging the elimination of criminal penalties for possessing a abject amount of pot. Its unjust to see someone, because of one finis one night in their youth, carry the stigma - to be barred from studying medicine, law, architecture or other fields where a criminal understand could present an obstacle, Clark said last week. The government has proposed expanding medicinal use of marijuana, and the Canadian Medical Association Journal recently supported full decriminalization. Canadas Supreme woo will consider a case this year that contends criminal charges for the personal use of marijuana violate constitutional rights. Making possession and use of small amounts of marijuana a civil offen se - akin to a traffic fine- instead of a criminal violation would move Canadian policy close at hand(predicate) to attitudes in The Netherlands and away from the United States, its neighbor and biggest trade partner.U.S. anti-drug activists are worried that legalization of marijuana in Canada could depress prices in the United States making marijuana more available. Legalization in Canada would also boost the arguments of American advocates for easing U.S. drug laws. Joseph A. Califano Jr., president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, and a former U.S.