Finding a substring in a string is simple. Using the InStr(string,substring) function will return the index of the first character of the substring if it is found in the string, or 0 if the substring is not found.
<%
mylist = "red,green,brown,yellow"
searchword = "brown"
if inStr(mylist,searchword) > 0 then
Response.write "found the substring"
else
Response.write "couldn\'t find the substring"
end if
%>