The existence of cheap cigarettes and the widespread presence of informal retailers of loose cigarettes represent a challenge in reducing tobacco consumption among Indonesian adolescents. Our quantitative results show that purchasing retail cigarettes in the past 30 days is significantly correlated with smoking 20 days or less in the past month, consuming five cigarettes or less per day, and having lower nicotine dependence. This smoking pattern among adolescents could be interpreted that loose cigarette users in our study were in the experimentation phase based on the five stages of nicotine addiction. Moreover, our qualitative findings showed that 7 out of 10 students bought retail cigarettes when trying smoking for the first time, students spent at least half of their weekly pocket money on tobacco products, ranging from IDR 30,000 to IDR 200,000 (USD 2-13), an amount equivalent to half of the average weekly per capita expenditure of the Indonesian population.