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Alessio Paduano

Photographer

Alessio Paduano

Fentanyl abuse in Estonia

Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid used in medicine as anesthetic. It has been passed off as drug for about fifteen years in the Estonian streets - European Union member country - being tens times more powerful than heroin and about hundred times more powerful than morphine. For this reason fentanyl has completely replaced all other drugs and in Tallinn, the capital of the country, causing about fifteen overdose cases per day, a huge number in a city counting 400.000 inhabitants.
Estonia has the highest number of per capita drug fatalities anywhere in Europe. The European deaths average that could be attributed to drug abuse is of 19.2 deaths per 1 million inhabitants. In Estonia instead there are 113 deaths per 1 million inhabitants.

Alessio Paduano

Born and currently based in Naples, Italy. I studied at the “Université Paris VII – Denis Diderot” in Paris thanks to a one-year scholarship. In 2007 I started working as a contributor and a photographer for several Italian newspapers. In 2009 I graduated in Sociology at the “Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II” with a dissertation in journalism, in which I analyzed the different slant between two newspapers: Le Monde (Paris) and Corriere della Sera (Milan). In 2010 I started the MA in photojournalism at the “Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli”, where I got my degree with honors. Some of my works have been exhibited in the PAN-Palazzo Arti Napoli (Italy), Castel dell’ Ovo (Naples, Italy), FotoLoft gallery (Russia), Biennal of Bibbiena (Italy), Palm Spring Photo Festival (California), Tel Aviv Photo Fair (Israel). I regularly publish in the National and International magazines, including Corriere della Sera, Internazionale, la Repubblica, The Guardian, Newsweek, Time and others. My research has been set in Italy, Romania, Tunisia, Egypt, Poland, Ukraine, Greece, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, France, Estonia, Spain and Malta telling stories related to current issues.