You people do realize that we are talking about the elephant being endangered, right? This is not some insignificant little insect we are talking about, but a major animal. Intelligent, wonderful, majestic. And you guys can't even sacrifice having grain in your white inlays to ensure its survival? Mankind is fxxxxd!
Nobody is kicking in your doors and taking your cues. You just can't sell the to people in other states, that is all. So what the cue makers probably won't be making ivory cues as much anymore? They will find substitutes, heck there are allready substitutes available. Maybe this will spur them on to make their designs more imaginative, and the execution of the inlay work better to help create value. Maybe they just can't lay back on making four pointers with ivory diamonds anymore.
The only people hurt by this are people who are cue flippers and cue investors. Everybody knows, that when you invest in a commodity of any kind there is a danger of losing money. I've got a stamp collection (pause till you stop laughing) that's not worth as much now as when I bought the damned things. Also, pool managed to live on without Ivory balls. If you read the book about Danny McGoorty you will see that he thought the Ivory balls were superior to plastic, but people adapted, as they will no doubt do now.
This is not the end of pool, it's not the end of cue collecting, it's not the end of cuemaking. Some people who speculated in infinitely rising cue prices will (maybe) lose some money. That is all.