PARIS — Drug Enforcement Agent Zane Loper delivered a powerful message to 535 spellbound students during an assembly at the Oxford Hills Middle School Monday: Drugs can ruin your life.

Loper knows what he’s talking about. The agent has made countless arrests in the Oxford Hills region over the last couple of years, and he’s become intimately acquainted with those who have thrown away a chance at a better life for an addiction.

By sharing the stories of those who he has seen go wrong, Loper made an impression on the students.

“He had a good story to tell,” said OHMS Principal Troy Eastman after the assembly. “The kids were focused. Any time you get 15 minutes of silence and attentiveness from 535 kids just before lunch, you know you’re doing something right.”

Loper was invited to speak as part of Red Ribbon Week, a larger anti-drug information campaign organized by the school and the Maine Wing of the Civil Air Patrol, an auxiliary organization affiliated with the U.S. Air Force.

Kids created posters advocating responsible living, and were given hundreds of red ribbons and red rubber bracelets with the message: “There are better things to do than drugs.”

“Hopefully, we’ve saved some kids and parents some heartbreak,” said Capt. Mary Story of the CAP. “We’re just doing what we need to be doing.”

The bracelets seemed to be popular with students, many of whom could be seen wearing them for the rest of the day.

Seventh-grade students Victoria Pendleton, Erin Eastman, Erin Morton and Katie Petrovich all said that they are likely to continue wearing their bracelets as accessories in the future.

They also said Loper made an impression on them, particularly with his personal account of a young person who began using drugs as a student, and wound up being arrested for using heroin.

“He told a story about a girl who did all these drugs,” Erin Eastman said.

“I thought it was interesting that it was her cousin that first offered her drugs,” Morton said. “Usually, cousins are nice.”

“She had straight A’s, and then she went to failing,” Petrovich said.

“Your life can fall apart so quickly,” he said.

If she’s concerned about someone’s drug use in the future, she said, she now knows what to do. “I would tell maybe a guidance counselor, or someone I felt I could talk to.”

Guidance counselor Phil Libby, who helped to organize the event, said that this is the second year the school has promoted Red Ribbon Week.

“I think it had a big impact,” he said. “You could have heard a pin drop.”

According to Loper, only 30 percent of those who inject heroin survive their drug addiction.

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