Roger Christie, an ordained minister by the Religion of Jesus Church, founded the THC Ministry on the Big Island in 2000. Christie considers pot to be a sacrament.

Big Island police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, however, consider pot a Schedule I illegal substance on par with mescaline, LSD and heroin.

Christie has been held at the Honolulu Federal Detention Center without bail since July 8 on federal drug charges and has become a symbol of the move to decriminalize marijuana. Supporters were scheduled to rally Wednesday afternoon in Hilo at the Mooheau Bandstand.

“Show support for your right to use cannabis for personal, medical or religious reasons,” a Christie fan posted to Tiffany Edwards Hunt’s Big Island Chronicle blog this week. “This man has been convicted of no crime he is in fact a pacifist. Many of you know him and know he is not a danger to our community as the government contends and uses as a pretense to jail him with out trial or recourse.”

Another post argues that voters should support cannabis-friendly politicians:

“The issue is far bigger than marijuana. Its about economics on so many levels, reducing enforcement costs by tens of millions, raising tax monies, but most importantly its about developing a hemp industry and all the products that could be manufactured here in Hawaii county. We could not only put our farmers back to work but create hundreds of manufacturing businesses.”

Industrial hemp is produced in countries like Canada and China, but the U.S. government sees no distinction between marijuana and non-psychoactive cannabis used for hemp production.

The issue of marijuana may be on the margins of political discussion in Hawaii, but on the Big Island and Maui, it comes up more often. The Hawaii County Council has voted several times in the past decade to reject more than half a million dollars in federal grant money earmarked to pay for helicopter-based marijuana eradication efforts.

County Councilman Kelly Greenwell has called for the decriminalization of marijuana on the Big Island. He was defeated in the primary, coming in last in a field of four, after being arrested this summer for allegedly speeding and resisting arrest.