I rarely enter a shopping mall; even more rarely do I set foot in women’s clothing stores because, at 75, I am hard pressed to identify anything else I would ever need to purchase.

Russia’s “big concession is they stop fighting, and they don’t take any more land,” U.S. President Donald Trump said last Tuesday, when asked what Russia was conceding in the thinly disguised surrender document he was trying to shove down Ukrainian throats. He truly is a 19th-century man at heart.

Those were the good old days, when anything you could conquer, you could keep. France took North Africa and Indo-China, Britain took South Africa and India, the United States took the Philippines and half of Mexico and Russia took a big chunk of China (but then lost it to Japan).

Actually, it was always like that. Every little human hunter-gatherer band fought to defend or expand its territories — and nobody changed the rules when they developed civilizations a few thousand years ago. War still delivered satisfactory results for the winners, so why would they change anything?

When the social and technological environment changes, human beings adapt — but they change as little as they have to. At least six different human mass civilizations emerged between 3,000 BC and 1,000 BC, and all of them retained the ancient institution of warfare. Indeed, we arrived in the 20th century with all that cultural baggage still intact.

Is it any wonder that Volodymyr Zelenskyy cannot trust a peace process engineered by Vladimir Putin, or any Russian, for that matter? For most of its history, Ukraine has been ruled by others — largely, the Russians — but somehow, has repeatedly thrown off the oppressive yoke.

The end of the First World War sparked a vicious Russian civil war overturning czarist rule, and Ukraine took a shot at freedom with its own War of Independence. The bloodshed lasted from March 1917 to November 1921. Ukraine got a brief, blood-tinged taste of that freedom for a year or two. But the Russians came back.

Somewhere during those few years, all four of my grandparents, still in their teens, were smuggled out by desperate peasant families, who sent them to Canada. They, and thousands of similar Ukrainian children (one child per family because even that was more than families could scrape up enough kopeks to fund) were chosen because they were the strongest and most likely to survive. Most worked their way across Europe, toiling on farms for pittances, arriving in Canada to rock-filled, thin-soiled land, gifted by Canada’s then-immigration minister, Clifford Sifton. He chose Ukrainians because the Prairies needed brute labour.

My baba on my father’s side had stitched vegetable seeds into the seams of her clothing and carried them to Canada, where she planted them and began selling vegetables in the old North End farmers market in Winnipeg. My mother was born in the family chicken coop — where they lived until there was enough money for gido to build a house.

Bill 48 was passed on Nov. 5, extending the ability to hold individuals for 72 hours when their level of intoxication prevents them from safely caring for themselves. This change responds to the reality that methamphetamine intoxication, and the resulting psychosis or agitation, can last far longer than the 24-hour limit used for alcohol.

As leaders in the health system, we want to describe the clinical rationale behind this approach and emphasize the importance of evaluating its outcomes. Manitoba is facing a methamphetamine crisis that has changed how hospitals and emergency workers care for people in crisis. Unlike alcohol, meth intoxication lasts longer, is less predictable, and often leaves people unable to keep themselves safe. The new provincial sobering centre will include dedicated spaces for meth intoxication, as well as alcohol-related care, with additional capacity now being built to expand services.

When people are acutely intoxicated, at risk, and unable to make safe decisions, involuntary care is already part of standard medical practice. We do this every day for people experiencing delirium, brain injuries, acute psychosis, or overdose because our duty is to prevent harm. Whether that intervention occurs in hospital or in a sobering centre is based on the needs of the individual at the time.

Recognizing the meth crisis does not mean reducing people’s rights. It means admitting that our current system has gaps in caring for those who are temporarily incapacitated by severe stimulant intoxication.