Cast question

I'm trying to set up a query to check several fields for the value of 'Debug
'
for example. I've been successful in doing this with LIKE 'Debug' or LIKE
'Debug%'
however, I'd like to do an = comparison. Some fields are varchar, some are
text. The text ones seem to be a problem.
Is there a way to do a Cast, so that I can do an = comparison with these
types of fields?>> Is there a way to do a Cast, so that I can do an = comparison with these
If the length of the TEXT values are less than 8000, you can cast them to
VARCHAR type.
Anith