Alcohol consumption and psychoactive drug use claimed more than three million lives in 2019, according to a new report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday.  

The WHO’s Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health and Treatment of Substance Use Disorders, based on 2019 data, showed that 2.6 million deaths per year were attributable to alcohol consumption, accounting for 4.7 per cent of all deaths in that year, and 0.6 million deaths to drug use.