Although Balabanova's initial discovery was based on a small number of mummies, she later tested 134 more mummies from other locations. Amazingly, about one in three contained nicotine and cocaine. The findings were successfully duplicated in British laboratories. So it looks like the pharaohs have legitimately been busted. Balabanova speculates that there may have once been native Egyptian plants similar in nature to coca leaves and tobacco, which were cultivated for drug use but are long since extinct.
Botanists have a hard time accepting such a theory, but it is possible.
There are known plants in the eastern hemisphere that yield minuscule amounts of nicotine, while nothing but South American coca leaves are known to produce cocaine. The very notion is like Kryptonite to any self-respecting Egyptologist. But if you think about the raw animal determination of a guy really jonesing for a Marlboro or a line, maybe it's not so ludicrous. Where there's withdrawal, there's a way. Or at least request the shaved-head burial.