This is a reply to a post on a different thread from someone else but which is probably better made here, so here goes:
All good stuff. But in my cold, stony and utterly unreasonable heart, in which all heroes must be immaculate, I can't accept caught dopers coming back.
You're totally right that capital punishment has never been a deterrent. However, in those places that it no longer exists in the world, it was phased out for more prosaic reasons: because a) it was very costly to conduct, b) it was politically ugly when too many mistakes were exposed and c) it was supposed to represent justice to a society that increasingly saw it as barbaric.
Now dope testing is almost certainly expensive and there are few here who would say the UCI smells of roses. But I still think it represents justice to those who knowingly defame the sport, their colleagues, their sponsors and the fans. It is not death, it is telling someone to go do something else with their life because their kind are not wanted.
The candy thief and the drunk still have their lives and a place in society and an ex-pro cyclist does too. It's just that they've been banned from a club. For me, it's like striking off a doctor or a disbarring a lawyer.