The Hawaii National Guard was a pioneer in the war on drugs, flying Huey helicopters in support of a big law enforcement roundup of marijuana plants in a 1977 Hawaii island operation called Green Harvest.

Former Gov. George Ariyoshi related in a 1982 New York Times story how 49 National Guardsmen flew into Kauai’s mountains by helicopter in 1981 to ferret out a dozen marijuana growers because police were afraid to go.

"The Guardsmen carried M-16 automatic rifles and were told to use them if necessary," the Times story said. "Only one shot was fired, however, and that was at a helicopter that had unloaded the troops and was airborne. The crew did not fire back."

The rest of the nation caught on to a good thing — as far as law enforcement was concerned — with all 50 states becoming involved in National Guard counterdrug operations by 1989.

In fiscal 2010, the Hawaii National Guard Counterdrug Support Office had a $4.6 million budget, 45 personnel from the Army and Air Guard, substance abuse and prevention programs, and a RAID (Reconnaissance Air Intrastate Detachment) of OH-58 Kiowa helicopters specifically configured for counterdrug surveillance and night operations.

But in the arc of the war on drugs, the Hawaii National Guard is coming down hard from a former funding high.

A reordering of national priorities amid tighter defense budgets resulted in the elimination of RAID counterdrug helicopter support in 2013, and a steady drop in funding to an anticipated $796,744 this year, officials said.

Support for the legalization of marijuana in California is growing, and Colorado; Washington state; Washington, D.C.; and Alaska have legalized recreational use, with Oregon legalization coming in July, the Associated Press reported.

The Hawaii counterdrug effort now consists of seven people: a coordinator, a budget person, a person who supports community-based organizations, and four intelligence analysts who assist law enforcement, said Air National Guard Lt. Col. Tamah-Lani Noh, who runs the program.

"Right now, we’re just trying to stay alive," said Noh, who was detailed to the Hawaii program in 1993. "We’re trying to make sure we put our resources where they are going to be most beneficial for the state."

The four intelligence analysts work on Oahu. The program used to have analysts on all the neighbor islands.

FORMER MAUI Police Chief Gary Yabuta, now director of the Hawaii High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, said the National Guard intelligence analysts assigned around the state "were able to do work that the narcotics officers didn’t have the capabilities to do," mostly in computer-based "forensics" investigations, including financial transactions.

"The tentacles of the narcotics dealer — it’s not just the drugs and hard cash; it’s hiding the assets," Yabuta said.

The federal HIDTA program funds intelligence sharing and drug enforcement through multiagency investigative, interdiction and prosecution activities.

U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins, a Republican from West Virginia, recently raised concern about continuing attempts to cut HIDTA funding, but Yabuta said, "Fortunately, we’ve been stable."

The Guard members who worked with law enforcement around the state "were the best and the brightest, and they performed extremely, extremely well," Yabuta said.

"It was a huge benefit, because the state and local enforcement couldn’t supply an intelligence analyst out of their own budgets," he said.

Asked if the four analysts remaining in the program are beneficial, Yabuta said, "We’ll take one if we have to."

Guard personnel working for the state on what’s known as Title 32 status can provide assistance to law enforcement in ways that active-duty military legally can’t. But the National Guard Bureau’s state counterdrug effort has been on a downward funding spiral nationally for several years.

In 2013, the National Guard Association of the United States said the Guard had responded to more than 60,000 requests from law enforcement the year before for counterdrug assistance.

"But the Defense Department now wants to focus on global narcotics efforts and training international partners, a decision that could mean a slow death to the program in the United States," the association said.

Last June, the association said that "for the third year in a row, the (presidential) budget request underfunds the National Guard counterdrug program."

In 2005, a statewide "Green Harvest" 10-day operation involving more than 125 agents — including Hawaii National Guard personnel — seized more than 29,000 marijuana plants on Oahu, Kauai, Maui and the Big Island.

The following year, the Guard’s two RAID Kiowas were in the air some 740 hours in support of marijuana eradication. Guard personnel also provided surveillance on the ground.

In 2009, the counterdrug program sent two of the Kiowas and some of its personnel to Guam on marijuana interdiction missions there.

BUT IN A SIGN of changing times, federal cutbacks in 2012 led the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to close its office and hangar at Hilo Airport, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported.

"So what we’ve come down to — our baseline budget is $500,000, and it’s been like that since FY13," Noh said. Funding above that each year has come from pleas to Congress. But gone are the days when the Hawaii counterdrug program would get a $3 million annual boost from U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye.

About 13 states, Hawaii included, are now minimally funded under a "threat-based" allocation used by the National Guard Bureau to dole out payments, Noh said. Border states such as California, Texas and Florida are getting more than $20 million, but Hawaii doesn’t have the population, among other factors, to now be more than minimally funded, she said.

The Hawaii National Guard counterdrug program now mainly offers intelligence analysis, Noh said. The funding that does come in is used for salaries and mainland training and travel.

She wants Hawaii counterdrug to be a $1 million program.

"If we’re a million-dollar program, we could again bring back the statewide intel analysts in every place, every island," Noh said. "Every police department would be ecstatic about that."

If funding goes the other way, she does not want the program to end.

"We don’t want to lose the program," Noh said. "If they cut our program to $200,000, our leadership understands the benefit of supporting what the governor’s initiative is to have something in place to support drug interdiction (and) drug information.

"We’re able to say, ‘If you give us $200,000, we’re going to take the $200,000 and we’re going to do the best job that we can,’" she said.