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What The FTC Diamond Ruling Means For Consumers And Diamond Marketers

The Federal Trade Commission recently amended its Jewelry Guides to help prevent deception in jewelry marketing. With new guidance for the jewelry industry, its wide-ranging ruling is a welcome relief to the man-made diamond industry and a migraine-sized headache for the mined-diamond industry. At the end of the day, it’s consumers who will benefit most from the new ruling.

The FTC based its decision in favor of scientific facts, not the mined-diamond industry lobby, giving consumers real information on which to make informed diamond purchasing decisions.

The ruling is simplicity itself. A diamond is a diamond no matter whether it is grown in a lab or comes out of the ground.

A diamond is pure crystallized carbon

The most sweeping change in the FTC’s ruling is removing the previously specified “natural” origin from the definition of a diamond. The old FTC definition stated a diamond was “a natural mineral consisting essentially of pure carbon crystallized in the isometric system.” Now the word “natural” has been erased.