Cruise Passengers Get Stiff Drug Sentences

Two Georgia women who sailed aboard the Charleston-based Carnival Fantasy with more than $400,000 in hashish taped to their bodies, were sentenced to six years in an Bermuda prison on Monday, according to Bermuda news outlets.

after American authorities uncovered a four-person plot to transport marijuana resin, also known as hashish, from Charleston to Bermuda, a Bermuda newspaper reports.

Two other women were arrested in Charleston, but Releford and Powell were detained when the ship docked in Bermuda, the Royal Gazette reports.

Cruise ship drug smuggling is a growing trend.

The Bermuda judge came down particularly hard on the women, despite pleas for leniency and testimony that they two desperately needed money and that was their only motivation for participating in the drug plot.

"Crybaby stories should not get them off easy," the judge reportedly told the women.

Read the full story on the Bermuda Gazette.