Flipper vs implant? (Photo)

The flipper is a temporary fix.  It is really designed for looks so you don't have to walk around with a tooth missing.  It really won't help you in chewing food too much.  It will keep the back tooth from shifting forward, so that is good.  Over time, if you do not get an implant, the bone in the area of the missing tooth will begin to dissolve away and may get to a point where there is too little bone for an implant.  The majority of bone loss happens in the first year of the tooth being out.  As for smoking, that really has minimal affect on modern implants.  Now, back in the 1990's, smoking caused a bit lower success rate with dental implants.  With modern implants, there are multiple studies that show implant survival rates in smokers are very close to non-smokers.  I certainly have tons of smokers as patients and all I do are implants all day, every day.  They have no higher failure rate in my practice compared to non-smokers.