Hartford Democrats’ latest iteration of a spending plan for the coming biennium — one that accounts for recently discovered revenue drops spawning barrels of red ink — will create a lot of pain in a lot of as-yet-unspecified places. But if the plan holds, one constituent group — those who support the legalization and retail sale of marijuana for recreational use — will have prevailed.

Democrats included the idea in their latest budget proposal, optimistically projecting that it will be good for nearly $200 million over the next two years.

It was only one piece in a plan that also would allow a third casino in the state, deeply cut public colleges and universities and slash municipal aid — and do away with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s proposal to shift some teacher pension costs onto towns, a prospect that was agitating town leaders and bedeviling budget processes across the state. With cuts to municipal aid not mapped out in any detail — and more negotiations underway — a degree of uncertainty still remains.

But as state colleges and universities struggle to absorb deeper funding cuts and the legal ramifications of a third casino, and intense lobbying surrounding the issue, lengthen that idea’s timeline, advocates for legal pot are rejoicing in some legislators’ support for their cause — even if it was brought on chiefly by fiscal concerns, and not public policy conviction.

But even as a matter of policy, the legalization, regulation and taxation of marijuana has long been a winning idea. To begin with, it would be a reliable source of revenue, likely pulling in about $100 million a year once a retail industry is established.

And as the Connecticut Coalition to Regulate Marijuana told our editorial board recently, it’s not just about the boost to Connecticut coffers — it’s about jobs, too.

Using Colorado’s experience as a guide, the group predicts that retail marijuana sales could create about 15,000 jobs in Connecticut, running the gamut from unskilled agricultural labor to semi-skilled retail positions requiring knowledge of a semi-pharmaceutical product and laboratory jobs at the high end.

And with as many as 1 in 7 Connecticut residents currently acquiring the drug from the black market, is directing all that wasted money toward a homegrown legal industry, and collecting taxes on it, not preferable? The reality today is that those hundreds of thousands of Nutmeggers who indulge in the drug are only subsidizing criminal enterprise; in coming years, as neighboring states gear up their own retail industries, many also will begin taking their business across state lines. Connecticut would do well to head that off and put a dent in its own financial problems to boot.

Likewise, as a matter of public health and safety, we’d prefer to see a regulated product with untained ingredients and known potency trading hands legally. And no, that argument would not extend to more dangerous drugs like heroin or cocaine, which unlike marijuana have well-established highly addictive qualities and are far more dangerous.

While we, and many in Connecticut, have long hesitated on legal marijuana because of the heroin and opiate epidemic claiming so many lives in the region, it is worth noting that more accessible marijuana might actually help to blunt the opiate problem.

Many opiate addictions originate in the prescription of legal painkiller drugs to treat symptoms of injuries or illness. Marijuana also can treat pain, and it is not difficult to imagine doctors recommending this over-the-counter remedy over addictive pain pills in certain situations. (Connecticut also could simply allow the prescription of marijuana for pain treatment. That would be a worthy proposal in the next session if outright legalization ends up failing.)

Legislators are being forced by fiscal reality to pull out all the stops in an effort to balance the state’s ledgers. Legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana is one of the easiest sells of anything being proposed, chiefly because it would hurt no one and in fact provide a net benefit to the economy and the people of the state.