(jckonline.com) - In 2019, after Trump administration officials demanded the industry declare the source of all its materials, a gem cutter complained to JCK that would be a nearly impossible task. Take the Tucson gem shows, he said. When grabbing lapis lazuli samples from a big bucket, there was no way he could determine whether every last piece came from a mine in an area controlled by the Taliban. (Most lapis comes from Afghanistan.) Then, as now, the Taliban was subject to U.S. sanctions. But the militant group was not on most people’s minds two years ago. Nor was the U.S. government issuing regular warnings about Taliban lapis, the way it has been doing with Burmese rubies. Now the Taliban is on everyone’s mind, and it’s quite possible that any gem that comes from the areas of Afghanistan it controls could be illegal to import into the United States.
News
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13 october 2026
