U.S. | Wed Oct 12, 2016 | 2:20pm EDT

More U.S. arrests for pot than violent crimes: rights groups

U.S. police make over 1.25 million arrests a year for drug possession, more than twice the number for violent crimes, and about half of the arrests are for marijuana, two human rights groups said on Wednesday in a call for sweeping drug decriminalization.

The 196-page report by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch said the "war on drugs" was a failure, with rates of drug use unchanged since President Richard Nixon launched the campaign more than 40 years ago.

States and the federal government should decriminalize the use and possession of drugs for personal use and focus instead on prevention and reducing harm, the report said.

“These wide-scale arrests have destroyed countless lives while doing nothing to help people who struggle with dependence,” Tess Borden, the report’s author, said in a statement.

The report said nearly half of all drug possession arrests in 2015, or more than 574,000, were for marijuana, based on Federal Bureau of Investigation figures.

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