The Melbourne milk bar turned tobacco dealer, the Canberra pub where customers ask for "whites", the Afghan supermarket peddling one kilogram bags of chop-chop and a packet of Marlboro 20s for $13.

There are Spoonbills and Manchesters, cigarettes you have never heard of, and loose-leaf from the Victorian Riverina for the first time in a decade.

It is the illicit trade in a legal drug that is becoming as lucrative as cocaine, at a fraction of the risk, and it is costing the economy millions of dollars in missed tax revenue, according to the federal government.

A list of tip offs shared with the Australian Border Force, NSW, Victorian and Federal Police has revealed more than 60 stores allegedly trading in illegal tobacco around the western suburbs of Sydney, and the east-west ring of Melbourne, with other centres in Griffith, Ballarat and Bendigo.