By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – ABC “World News Tonight” will be in town today to film some of the city’s schoolchildren – including one in a skunk costume.

A national TV crew will film the students during a high school smoking-cessation class and an elementary school presentation. Some children will be interviewed one on one.

The segment will air as part of the news program’s monthlong series on smoking and lung cancer.

ABC News chose to highlight Maine because of its comprehensive efforts to curb smoking. The network learned about Lewiston from the American Lung Association, said Substance Abuse Coordinator Vicky Wiegman.

The TV crew will follow Lewiston High School students this morning as they participate in a smoking-cessation class. The 10-session program meets during school hours and teaches teen smokers about the dangers of tobacco, alternative ways to deal with stress and ways to quit smoking.

Some of the high-schoolers were caught smoking in school and were required to attend the program. Others joined on their own because they wanted to stop smoking.

This morning, the crew will film Martel Elementary School first-graders while they learn about smoking from high school volunteers and “Samantha Skunk,” a nonsmoking mascot who has her own book.

That program, started in New Hampshire and used with young children in Lewiston, Auburn, Lisbon, and Turner’s SAD 52, focuses on the bad smell of cigarettes and how children prevail when they don’t go along with the crowd. During the lesson, a high-schooler dresses as Samantha Skunk and reads to the children.

The high school’s smoking-cessation class and the “Samantha Skunk” lessons are part of the school system’s kindergarten-through-grade-12 tobacco, drug and alcohol program.