Exiting inventory with item held in pointer no longer drops item

When you are in inventory and are holding one or more items with the pointer/cursor, it used to be that if you exited the inventory by pressing "e" or "Esc", the item would drop. This is no longer the case - the item returns to the inventory. I have searched the version changelogs and can find no mention of this changed behaviour, thus I believe it to be a bug.