SQL Statement and Type Mismatch

Any idea why this:

strSQL = "SELECT * "
strSQL = strSQL & "FROM t_events "
strSQL = strSQL & "WHERE " & inSTR 1,te_keywords,vKeyWords) > 0
strSQL = strSQL & " AND " & inSTR(1, te_region,vRegion) > 0

rs.Open strSQL

would give me a type mismatch (on the very first line)

Nevermind, I figured out that I can't do that and instead went with "like" which is working.