Fort Knox has stored some of the most unusual stuff that you could imagine! Can you guess what they are?
The glittering vaults of gold at Fort Knox and West Point, N.Y., Harbor a deep secret: Enough black opium and white morphine to satisfy the legal needs of the entire nation for a year.
Since 1955 the drugs have been part of the nation's strategic reserves and were intended to tide the country over if foreign opium supplies were cut off in an emergency.
With the end of the Cold War, the huge stores of narcotics no longer make much sense, but Congress won't let the department sell the drugs.
Federal law prohibits the agency from selling anything that could hurt domestic producers, so they'll have to keep it for a while. They have enough morphine to meet the US's demand for an entire year.