WATERVILLE — New England’s top judge on Thursday called for the creation of a national commission to revisit the war on drugs, a battle the country appears to be losing as billions of dollars are misspent on enforcement measures.

The proposed joint congressional-White House panel should extend beyond political rhetoric and take an objective look at current drug policies, said Juan Torruella, the chief judge of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. He said the commission should spark national debate by considering policy changes, such as shifting funds from enforcement to education and possibly even decriminalizing drugs.

As a trial and appellate judge, Torruella said his views on the war on drugs have changed during the past 20 years or so. His most recent metamorphosis came a few years ago when a lawyer in El Salvador suggested that Americans should concentrate more on abolishing the lucrative drug market than trying to combat those who control it.

“This may sound like a trite incident, but it hit me like a hammer between the eyes,” Torruella said to a Colby College audience that included students and fellow federal judges.

Like any good judge, Torruella backed up his case with a plethora of statistics. From 1973 to 1993, he said, the federal government increased spending by 12,000 percent to enforce drug laws, while use decreased only about 59 percent. Money spent on education, rather than enforcement, would be more effective, the judge said.

“I’m not promoting one viewpoint,” said the Reagan appointee. “I’m saying we have to look into this.”

The judge, a former Olympic sailor from his native Puerto Rico, also said the government should experiment with decriminalizing marijuana in pilot programs. Of the 11 states that have tried similar programs, he said, only Alaska returned to its former policies.

Torruella stressed that he does not advocate drug use or leniency toward dealers. But, he said, the economics of the drug trade make a strong case for overhauling the country’s attitude toward the industry: As enforcement of drug laws escalates, so does the price of the product, thereby increasing as well the lure of dealing.

A modest investment in cocaine, for example, can return a large profit for dealers, he said.

While the idea of changing the paradigms of the drug war are not new — even conservative commentator William F. Buckley has advocated decriminalization of drugs — it’s somewhat unusual for a sitting federal judge to comment on social policy.

At the risk of creating the perception that he is not impartial as a judge, Torruella said he felt an obligation to speak out on the issue.

While he lamented that federal prosecutors often have more power than judges in controlling sentences for drug-related criminals, Torruella said that simply throwing people in jail does not go to the root of the problem. A third of African-Americans aged 18-34, he said, are either in jail or in a drug-related program because of a drug offense.

“We simply cannot put everybody in jail,” Torruella said.

Torruella stopped short of calling for a national decriminalization of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, and pointed out that legalizing drugs could come with a high social cost.

While the murder rate dropped during the decade after Prohibition ended, alcohol use increased, he said. The same could be expected of now-illicit drugs, Torruella said, adding that cheap and readily available drugs could be used by young people.

“But the present system has created a large pool of money for the criminal society in our country,” Torruella said.

Recent efforts in the war on drugs, including more aggressive moves by the government to claim the property of criminals, have eroded Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure, Torruella said.

While Torruella said he was not defending drug dealers, “we don’t have two Constitutions.”

“You can’t have one Constitution for the good guys and another Constitution for the bad guys,” the judge said.